198 RACES OF MEN. 



must be secured, and presents are exchanged between the groom and 

 the bride's father. All this takes a certain amount of time, and 

 must delay the date of marriage to an age two or three years later 

 than with the Fuegians. The women are chaste, and as a conse- 

 quence are able to produce children a good many more years than 

 is possible with those that lack chastity. The fact that these two 

 races, closely related to each other, should differ so remarkably in 

 intelligence calls for some explanation. This explanation is fur- 

 nished by the theory of use-inheritance in the difference between 

 the ages at which they reproduce, and consequently the difference 

 in the amount of time which the parents have to use and develop 

 their mental powers before their children are born. 



THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS. 



The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands are perhaps the lowest 

 of all human beings. Living under a tropical sun, they arrive at 

 maturity at a very early age. Their principal clothing is said to be 

 a coat of clay to protect the skin from insects. They have no laws, 

 religion, or village government. Marriage custom or morality 

 there is none. They live together in communities of from fifty to 

 eighty, and each woman is the common property of any man who 

 may want her. With no marriages, no contests for exclusive pos- 

 session, and no sense of virtue, reproduction naturally begins at 

 the first physical opportunity. Flower calls them an "infantile" 

 negro type 1 . They have names for only "one" and "two," though 

 with the aid of their fingers they can count to ten. Since the 

 British occupation they are dying out, and their place is being taken 

 by a mixed breed. Here we have in the early reproduction of the 



(i) Jour. Anthrop. Inst., 1870, pp. 132-133. 



