274 THE EEGULATION OF NUMBEES 



are restricted to clearly marked territories. Eobertson Smith, 

 after describing the local groups among the Arabs, goes on to say 

 that ' the nomadic Arabs, whose way of life supplied the type in 

 which all Arabian society was mainly moulded, are not to be 

 thought of as roaming quite at large through the length and 

 breadth of the peninsula. Each group, or confederation of 

 groups, had its own pastures, and still more its own waters, beyond 

 which it could not move without immediate risk of a hostile 

 encounter.' ^ Somewhat similar conditions are recorded of all 

 nomadic people.^ 



4. When we consider the factors which bear upon fertility and 

 elimination, we find that, as in the first sub-group, war and disease 

 are of importance — especially the latter — and that, further, the 

 amount of elimination to which they give rise is very irregular 

 from one period to another. For some thousands of years India 

 appears to have been subject to the passage of scourge after 

 scourge, sweeping away hundreds of thousands of the population. 

 Famine at times is the cause of many deaths, and is due in part, 

 as it is in varying degrees among all races, to climatic factors. 

 It happens, however, that in India these conditions are such as to 

 produce famine more often than anywhere else. Peninsular India 

 is ' subject to excessive variations [of rainfall] distributed quite 

 irregularly and over very long periods. In such regions years of 

 adequate rainfall and abundant yield may follow in successive 

 decades at a time during which a considerable population settles 

 and opens up the country ; then follow a few years of drought 

 with high temperature and aridity ; and unless migration and 

 storage works are practicable and are executed in time, the land 

 is deserted.' ^ Famine is also due at times to some failure in 

 social organization or to some failure to keep up the previous level 

 of skill, as, for instance, to maintain irrigation works. 



Fecundity, as we have seen, is probably, on the whole, higher 

 among these races than among the races of the second group. 

 Pre-puberty marriage in India probably has a considerable influence 

 in reducing fertihty, at least among the Hindu part of the popu- 

 lation. With regard to practices hmiting fertihty and causing 

 elimination, we have seen that infanticide and abortion are wide- 



^ Robertson Smith, Kinship and Early Marriage, p. 36. ^ For Tartar 



tribes see William de Ru brack. Journey, pp. 53 and 188. * Dickson, Climate 



and Weather, p. 148. For a study of somewhat similar conditions in Australia see 

 Taylor, The Australian Environment. 



