PHYSIOLOGICAL IGNORANCE 257 



consequently it is usually held blamable to have inter- 

 course with a girl who is not perfectly mature. 

 Practice however lags behind their precepts at a 

 considerable distance. 1 



Much further to the south the Gold on the lower 

 reaches of the Amur river before the arrival of the 

 Russians were in the habit of marrying their children 

 while still very young. Girls were married as young 

 as eight or nine years, and boys at the age of ten or 

 eleven. It sometimes " happened that a ten-year-old 

 boy had to marry a twenty-year-old girl. Such early 

 marriages are prohibited nowadays by the Russian 

 Government, and intelligent Gold have come to under- 

 stand how detrimental these marriages have been to 

 their people. Although nominally abolished, pre- 

 mature intercourse still continues and contributes; no 

 less than epidemics and alcoholism, to the gradual 

 ruin of the people. Russian physicians who have 

 become familiar with the people through visits to 

 hospitals or to their villages assert that incest is not 

 unusual between brother and sister and among other 

 relatives." 2 Esthonian girls are unchaste before the 

 age of puberty. 3 



The girls of the lower classes in Cochin China 

 sometimes marry in their seventh year. 4 Turcoman 

 girls reach puberty generally between fourteen and 

 sixteen years of age ; but they are very often married 

 earlier, the usual age being from twelve to fifteen. 5 



1 Bogoras, Jesup Exped. vii. 37, 361 ; Amer. Anthrop. N. S. iii. 

 102. 



2 Laufer, Amer. Anthrop. N. S. ii. 318. 



3 Ploss, Weib, i. 235. 



4 Id. 393, vaguely citing Crawfurd. 



5 Volkov, L 'Anthrop. viii. 356, citing Yavorsky. 



II R 



