262 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



marriageable class with impunity ; indeed quite young 

 children are handed over to the old men to be " broken 

 in." 1 Among some of the tribes of South Australia 

 the girls are said to be accustomed to sexual intercourse 

 from their eighth year : they marry and cohabit 

 regularly with their husbands at the age of from eight 

 to twelve. 2 On Easter Island the women are com- 

 paratively few. It is said that they number only one 

 third of the population. Whether, as has been sur- 

 mised, it is attributable to this or not, the girls are 

 married at ten years old, long before they are suffi- 

 ciently developed. Their children are consequently 

 weak and unhealthy ; and there is great mortality from 

 scrofulous disease in the children and from phthisis in 

 the adults. 3 On Yaluit, one of the Marshall Islands, 

 we learn, no value was attached to the chastity of the 

 unmarried girls ; sexual intercourse begins with the 

 first stirrings of nature before menstruation. It is 

 universally believed that there is no girl of twelve who 

 has not been deflowered ; and contagious sexual 

 diseases have been found among children of ten. 4 

 The Igorots of the province of Benguet and the 

 sub-province of Lepanto in Luzon, the largest of the 

 Philippine Islands, betroth their children at a very 

 early age, and marry them at or even before the age of 



1 Roth, Bull. v. 23 (s. 83); viii. 9 (s. 10). 



2 Ploss, op. tit. i. 392, citing Hersbach (a second-hand authority). 

 Ploss (op. tit. i. 296) states on the authority of somebody, apparently 

 Eyre, that the Australian girl has intercourse from her tenth year 

 with youths of fourteen or fifteen. If Eyre be his source he is 

 doubtless referring to south-eastern tribes. 



3 J. A. I. v. 112,113, summarising Dr. Philippi's work on Easter 

 Island published at Santiago in 1873. 



4 Kohler, Zeits. vergl. Rechtsw. xiv. 417, quoting a report by an 

 official. 



