262 HISTORICAL RACES 



is especially noticeable where in recent days infanticide has 

 much diminished. Thus in Rajputana girls are allowed to die 

 when in the case of a boy medical aid would be summoned.^ 



Infanticide was extensively practised among the Teutonic 

 tribes before their conversion to Christianity.- The well-known 

 statement of Tacitus that the Germans did not practise infanticide 

 is certainly erroneous. Lecky suggests that the whole passage 

 is to be taken rather as an indirect way of scolding his own people 

 than as a sober statement of fact about another. ' Guizot regards 

 the picture which Tacitus draws as being analogous to the portrait 

 Fenimore Cooper gives of the Red Indians.' ^ There is ample 

 evidence that the practice was common. ' Grimm declares that 

 " all the Teutonic Sagas are full of the exposure of children, and 

 there can be no doubt that in the early days of heathenism it 

 was lawful ". Miiller says that all the Teutonic races in early 

 times had the right of exposing their children, but in the course 

 of centuries it came to be exercised only by the parent. ... It 

 is related that, when in a. d. 1000 the Norsemen of Iceland 

 were converted to Christianity, they stipulated that the right of 

 slaying their infants should not be removed.' * There is evidence 

 from graves that infanticide was practised in Neolithic times 

 in England.^ It is thus of particular interest to notice that, 

 where we can catch sight of peoples emerging out of the pre- 

 historic period, we find infanticide established as a practice ; 

 the conclusions derived from the direct evidence of the peoples 

 of this group are thus linked on to the conclusion to which in the 

 last chapter we came from indirect evidence.^ 



13. Turning to sub-groups three and four, disease, war, famine, 

 and child mortality have already been dealt \vith. The remaining 

 factors are those in respect of which there is a contrast between 

 these sub-groups and those just considered. Furthermore, as 



• Dubois, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 612. Infanticide was sometimes committed by the 

 Kandyans (Bailey, Trans. Eth. Soc, vol. ii, p. 296), by the Koulous (Ujfalvy, 

 Bull. Soc. Anth., vol. v, p. 227), by the Belochis (Barton, Sindh, p. 244), and in 

 Svanetia (Phillipps-Wolley, Savage Svanetia, vol. ii, p. 92). 



^ Strieker, Arch, filr Anth., vol. v, p. 451. It was practised in the Vedic age 

 (Kaegi, Rigveda, p. 16). » Sutherland, loc. cit., vol. i, p. 138. See Grimm, 



Deutsche Rechtsalterthmmr, pp. 455 ff. * Ibid., p. 138. * Lubbock, 



Prehistoric Times, p. 176. 



• Infanticide was practised by the extinct Guanches of the Canary Islands 

 (Ploss, Das Kind, vol. ii, p. 259).' Dasent says of the Norsemen that it was the 

 father's right to rear his children or not at his will. As soon as it was bom the 

 child was laid upon the bare ground ; and until the father came and looked at it 



. . its fate hung in the balance ' (Story of Burnt Njal, vol. i, p. xxv). 



