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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



by a grandfather or priest, fasting and with sol- 

 emn accompaniment of chants ; among the hill- 

 people of India hair-cutting is a ceremony con- 

 nected with the naming of the child and its re- 

 ception into the tribe ; with the Chinese it is one 

 of the principal formalities of the festival held 

 when the mother brings out the three-months-old 

 child and the father gives it a name. Not to 

 quote too many cases, we need only refer to the 

 ancient Greek and Roman customs, recollecting 

 that relics of the classic rite may still be seen in 

 Europe within the limits of the Greek Church, 

 where clipping and offering locks of the child's 

 hair is associated with the baptismal ceremony 

 (chapter xiv.). The best-known and most per- 

 fect example of a practical dietetic proceeding 

 giving rise to a religious ceremony may be seen 

 among the various nations who have consecrated 

 the act of bathing, especially the bathing of the 

 child, into a rite of lustration or baptism. A 

 tolerably full collection of details is given by Dr. 

 Ploss (chapter xiii.). 



This principle that we must seek practical 

 purpose as the foundation of custom, even among 

 the lowest savages, must be qualified by remem- 

 bering that the means may be such as we know 

 to be ill adapted to their ends, while these ends 

 themselves may be useless or even very harmful. 

 They are none the less to be classed as practical 

 if they show distinct purposes, pursued by means 

 believed to be effective. Viewed in this light, 

 the repulsive details in Dr. Ploss's dissertation 

 on infanticide (chapters xxiii.-iv.) are mostly in- 

 telligible. The actual food-question among rude 

 and half-starved wandering tribes, whether an- 

 other child can be kept ; the dislike of the par- 

 ents to add to the troubles of life ; the difficulty 

 among many tribes of disposing of female chil- 

 dren in marriage, which leads to girls being so 

 often killed or abandoned, while boys are brought 

 up ; are among the reasons operating in the most 

 practical way, especially in the lower culture, 

 where the question of infanticide is not one of 

 right and wrong at all, but it is for the parents to 

 decide whether a child is to live or not. Few 

 changes in the moral code are more remarkable 

 than that which separates the Australian, the 

 Chinese, the ancient Roman or German in this 

 respect from the nations of Christendom. It is 

 true that European practice shows .an evil discrep- 

 ancy from principle. England is worse than 

 other countries for the poisoning of children with 

 opium while the mothers are away at factory- 

 work, while German slang has the hideously-sug- 

 gestive name of " angel-maker " (Engelmacherin) 



for the women in whose charge such babies are 

 left. In studying the motives of infanticide, 

 however, we have to separate those which, to our 

 judgment, are practical — such as want, indolence, 

 or shame — from other motives, happily incapable 

 of producing such results in the civilized world, 

 but which at lower grades of culture have a con- 

 siderable effect in bringing about infanticide. 

 These are the sacrifice of children to propitiate 

 deities, and the opinion that children ought not 

 to live if they show unlucky symptoms, such as 

 cutting the upper front teeth first. Among the 

 most remarkable puzzles of superstition in the 

 world is the wide-spread practice of killing 

 twins, one or both (chapter xxiv.). Not suffi- 

 ciently accounted for by the reason sometimes 

 assigned that the mother cannot rear both, this 

 set of customs probably finds its real explanation 

 in magical ideas. Magic is, indeed, among the 

 most important factors in generating custom, as 

 the present book would amply prove if it proved 

 nothing else. 



To magic belongs the " couvade," which, as 

 one of the most remarkable habits still lingering 

 within the pale of civilization, is here elaborately 

 treated in a chapter by itself (chapter v.). To a 

 modern European it may at first seem strange 

 that any intelligible train of ideas should have 

 made it customary for a father, on the birth of 

 his child, to fast or otherwise diet himself, ab- 

 stain from violent exertion, or even lie up alto- 

 gether. Yet the modern savages who do these 

 things often have a distinct notion of what they 

 mean, and Dr. Ploss is inclined to accept their 

 main explanation as the correct one, much as his 

 present reviewer did in investigating the subject 

 years ago (Tylor, "Early History of Mankind," 

 chapter x.). The native explanation in question 

 is that the child is sympathetically affected by the 

 actions of the father, who abstains accordingly 

 from certain food and work which might not suit 

 the baby. From this point of view the couvade 

 is simply one case of that system of superstitious 

 belief which may be called sympathetic magic. 

 Savage parents, in fact, begin to take these 

 precautions against sympathetically injuring the 

 child long before it is born. Thus, we hear of 

 the father fasting or abstaining from particular 

 food, lest the child should suffer; while some- 

 times the precise magical motive comes clearly 

 into view, as where a Dyak avoids killing any 

 creature or using a knife, lest he should hurt the 

 unborn child — or where a Carib will not eat wild- 

 hog lest his baby should be born with a snout. 

 That the couvade proper has the same origin 



