NOT EUGENESIC. 53 



rior chief covered with honourable scars 1 attaches such small 

 importance to the fidelity of his wife, and jokes about his dis- 

 honour, it is scarcely admissible that the men of his tribe should 

 be more susceptible in this respect. Yet this very chief found 

 it, according to Cunningham, 2 quite natural that, according to 

 the Australian custom, the weakest of two new-born twins 

 should be killed. 



This custom has been cited to show that the Australian wo- 

 men attach no importance to the lives of their children, and 

 that, consequently, they would offer no resistance to the mas- 

 sacre of the new-born Mulattoes. A race of beings, where the 

 females do not love their young, would scarcely be a human 

 race. The custom of preserving only one twin, and to sacrifice 

 the other on the day of its birth, seems improbable and inex- 

 plicable ; but taking into consideration the famishing condition 

 of the Australians, the uncertainty and the insufficiency of 

 their alimentation, the absolute want of social organisation, 

 and the material difficulty attending the bringing up of only 

 one child, it may be imagined that the mother, incapable, per- 

 haps, of suckling one baby, resigns herself to sacrificing one 

 child to save the other. There is, therefore, no absolute 

 parallel between the custom in regard to twins and that of the 

 pretended massacre of cross-breeds. If it be still supposed 

 that the natives of the environs of Sydney, perverted by their 

 intercourse with convicts, and exasperated by their violence, 

 have adopted this revolting habit, we should even then only 

 admit that such a degradation is merely local in its applica- 

 tion. Certain abominations spread from place to place, and 

 are transmitted from people to people ; but a usage so contrary 

 to natural instinct does not arise simultaneously, and under the 

 same form in different parts of a country. The Australians, 

 however, of Sydney, have no means of transmitting their cus- 

 toms either to the natives of Tasmania, or of Port Essington in 

 North Australia. Dr. Waitz supposes that even seven hundred 



1 Lesson, loc. cit., relates that Bongarri had his arm broken, that the frac- 

 ture was not consolidated, nevertheless, the Australian chief used his arm 

 either for rowing or for handling his weapons. 



a Cunniugham, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 8. 



