38 WALTER HBAPE. 



of the Andaman Islands are said to be born mostly at a 

 particular time of the year — during the rains. 



I have not done more here than simply to indicate the 

 bearing of a very considerable literature which deals specially 

 or incidentally with this subject ; one section of this literature 

 demonstrates by means of statistics, for countries where such 

 are available, an excessive birth rate in special seasons; the 

 other shows that the habits and customs of the less civilised 

 peoples indicate that their sexual and reproductive functions 

 are specially stimulated at definite times of the year. 



While there is some variation in the season for special 

 sexual activity indicated by the above statements, spring is 

 obviously the most usual time. Hutchinson (1897) seeks to 

 show that the time of marriage amoug certain widely diver- 

 gent people is largely governed by times of agricultural 

 plenty; for economic reasons this might reasonably be 

 expected, though the evidence he brings forward is not at 

 all conclusive. But it does not seem to me to be an important 

 point. Many reasons, religious or otherwise social, may have 

 arisen to interfere with such a rule, supposing it ever was a 

 rule. The importance of the evidence consists in the proof 

 that any time is or was specially conducive to sexual dis- 

 turbance, and this, I think, has been proved. (See also 

 Laycock [1840] and Ellis^s very interesting resume of this 

 question.) 



The wide variation in the time of the year duriug which 

 the sexual season of the lower mammals occurs in different 

 parts of the world, renders it not surprisiug that there 

 should be wide variation in man also in this respect, in 

 different geographical areas. 



However that may be, the fact remains that there is much 

 evidence in favour of the view that special sexual seasons 

 were, at one time, universally experienced by the various 

 races of man, a fact of great importance from a comparative 

 point of view. 



But not only is there evidence of a circumscribed period 

 for reproduction in the ancestral human being, and in those 



