276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Again, while in some places the establishment of the exogamous 

 prejudice is ascribed to the practice of wife-stealing (pp. 53, 54, and 

 136), it is elsewhere made the antecedent of wife-stealing : interdict 

 against marriage within the tribe was primordial. Now, if this last is 

 Mr. McLennan's view, I agree with Sir J. Lubbock in thinking that 

 it is untenable. It cannot be assumed that in these earliest groups of 

 men, with which Mr. McLennan commences, there were anv estab- 

 lished rules of marriage. Unions of the sexes must have preceded all 

 social laws. The rise of a social law implies a certain preceding con- 

 tinuity of social existence ; and this preceding continuity of social 

 existence implies the reproduction of successive generations. Hence 

 reproduction, entirely unregulated by interdicts, must be taken as 

 initial. 



Assuming, however, that of his two views Mr. McLennan will abide 

 by the moi-e tenable one, that wife-stealing led to exogamy, let us ask 

 how far he is justified in alleging that female infanticide, and con- 

 sequent scarcity of women, led to wife-stealing. At first sight it 

 appears undeniable that destruction of infant girls, if frequent, must 

 have been accompanied by a deficiency of adult females ; and it seems 

 strange to call in question the legitimacy of this inference. But Mr. 

 McLennan has overlooked a concomitant. Tribes in a state of chronic 

 hostility are constantly losing their adult males, and the male mor- 

 tality so caused is usually considerable. Hence the killing many 

 female infants does not necessitate paucity of women : it may merely 

 prevent excess. Excess must, indeed, be inevitable if, equal numbers 

 of males and females being reared, some of the males are from time 

 to time slain. The assumption from which Mr. McLennan's argument 

 sets out is, therefore, inadmissible. 



How inadmissible it is, becomes conspicuous on finding that, where 

 wife-stealing is now practised, it is commonly associated with polygyny. 

 The Fuegians, named by Mr. McLennan among wife-stealing peoples, 

 are polygynists. According to Dove, the Tasmanians were polygy- 

 nists, and Lloyd says that polygyny was universal among tbem ; yet 

 the Tasmanians were wife-stealers. The Australians furnish Mr. 

 McLennan with a typical instance of wife-stealing and exogamy ; and 

 though Mr. Oldfield alleges scarcity of women among them, yet other 

 testimony is quite at variance with his. Mitchell says : " Most of the 

 men appeared to possess two [females], the pair in general consisting 

 of a fat plump gin, and one much younger;" and, according to the 

 Frenchman Peltier, named in the last chapter as having lived seven- 

 teen years with the Macadama tribe in Queensland, the women were 

 " more numerous than the men, every man having from two to five 

 women in his suite." In North America the Dakotas are at once 

 wife-stealers and polygynists, Burton tells us. In South America the 

 Brazilians similarly unite these two traits; and among the Caribs 

 they are especially associated. Writing of polygyny as practised on 



