RACES OF MEN. 201 



In the Australians we have all of the immorality of the Bush- 

 men or the Fuegians, and much more of actual savagery, yet they 

 are much more intelligent and have much heavier brains. There is 

 between their superior intelligence and their social customs no con- 

 ceivable relationship except the circumstances that bring about a 

 later age of reproduction on the part of the father. Selection, if 

 it acts at all, acts only to select those men who have had more years 

 in which to use their brains, and not those which are simply advan- 

 tageous variations. 



AFRICAN TRIBES. 



The M'pongwes are an ignorant, lazy and generally good-for- 

 nothing tribe located on the Gaboon river, near the equator in West 

 Africa. "Girls are frequently married at ten, mothers at fourteen 

 and old women at twenty." A few hundred miles north of the 

 Gaboon is Bornu, a large and semi-civilized kingdom on the west- 

 ern side of Lake Tchad. In Bornu, marriage is later than elsewhere 

 in Africa, and usually occurs when the girl is 15 or 16. 



SOUTH AMERICAN TRIBES. 



In the northern part of South America the Indian tribes are 

 little better than the Diggers. They are degenerating and gradu- 

 ally dying out. Chastity is unknown and reproduction begins at 

 about the earliest possible age. "With the Moxos and the Chiquitos, 

 premature marriages were such a settled order of things that there 

 were no celebates above the age of fourteen for the men and twelve 

 for the women. The Jesuit missionaries in South America had 

 completely adopted the native custom, and they often married young 

 girls and boys of ten and twelve years." 4 One tribe, however, the 

 Acawoios, is superior to its neighbors. They practice agriculture, 



(4) Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage, p. 107. 



