MANIFESTED IN HUMAN SOCIETY 115 



The Baganda are an exceptionally intelligent race 

 occupying an exceptionally fertile country. As such 

 races as the Bushmen, the Hottentots, and the Australians 

 are much more depraved, and live under much harder 

 conditions, it seems certain that their deathrate is much 

 higher. With the aid of a little simple arithmetic the 

 reader may form for himself a rough estimate of the number 

 of births necessary to maintain the numbers of the popula- 

 tion, and may judge for himself the validity of the current 

 opinion that the lowest races are less fertile than the 

 more civilised races. A mass of evidence to the same effect 

 might be quoted. Apparently the facts deserve a much 

 more painstaking and exact investigation than they have 

 yet received. 



As an example of the loose way in which superficial 

 observations and opinions are propagated as established 

 facts may be mentioned the belief that half-castes are 

 very infertile. This has been shown by Westermarck 

 to be without foundation. Bishop R. Salvado says : 

 11 With regard to the sterility of half-caste natives, of 

 which I had no experience when I wrote my book, I 

 am able now to deny it altogether, except in cases similar 

 to those among Europeans. I know several cases of 

 husband and wife, half-caste natives, having at present 

 six and seven and even eight children, and they may 

 in time have more ; and I know a good many Europeans 

 who, having married native women, have several children- 

 In fact, in the case of one of these marriages there were 

 six children and in another seven, and I could give the 

 names of each of them." 1 



These facts are the more remarkable because Dr. J. R. 

 Thomson says that " the Australian woman, when she 

 places herself under the roof of a European settler as 

 1 The History oj Human Marriage, Westermarck. 



