114 THE LAW OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS 



Yet these Russian peasant women are the most fertile 

 in Europe. It is probable that the day-to-day life of 

 most of these primitive peoples is not so hard as the lives 

 led by the poorest classes in Europe, especially in Russia. 

 If, therefore, they are less fertile, it will be because their 

 lives are less hard, not because the conditions of life are 

 harder. But such evidence as is available seems to point 

 to their being very fertile. 



Take the case of the " Western Australians, among 

 whom the mortality of children is so enormous that the 

 greater number of them do not survive even the first 

 month after birth, and who inhabit a land pre-eminently 

 unproductive of animals and vegetables fitted to sustain 

 life, a land where ' during the summer season the black 

 man riots in comparative abundance, but during the 

 rest of the year . . . the struggle for existence becomes 

 very severe.' " l And take as a further example the 

 inhabitants of the highly favoured country of Uganda. 

 " One great source of mortality is the unprecedented 

 lack of knowledge and common sense shown by the women. 

 Children are never allowed to be born in the house, the 

 mother being always carried out into the open air, and 

 the first operation the child experiences is that of being 

 washed in cold water. Then, though the country is 

 not supplied with cow's milk, and few peasants can 

 obtain it, they never milk the goats, of which almost 

 every peasant has a few ; and when the mother dies, or 

 cannot produce food for her offspring, they try to bring 

 up the child on the soft pulp of bananas, or banana beer. 

 The wretched state of housing, too, is responsible for many 

 deaths. No weakling can live under such conditions, and 

 80 per cent, or more of the children die in early infancy." 2 



1 The History of Human Marriage, Westermarck. 

 8 Th* Baganda at Home, C. W. Hattersley. 



