140 SEX-LORE 



Islands joyfully welcome the arrival of a daughter, 

 because when she marries she will bring her 

 parents a high purchase-price, which is shared by 

 all who were present at her birth. If a boy is born, 

 the mother is often reproached for not having a 

 daughter, and the guests go sadly home. A girl if 

 often betrothed as soon as she is born, and the bride- 

 price agreed upon. The Kaffirs and Hottentots also 

 welcome the birth of a girl, since every daughter 

 represents an increase of fortune to the parents when 

 she marries. The more daughters a man has, the 

 more cattle he will receive from their suitors. This 

 preference for girls is carried to the extreme in some 

 African tribes, where the boys are killed and not the 

 girls. 



With the growth of civilization, the practice of 

 infanticide becomes reprehensible and falls into disuse, 

 being often commuted into the sale of children, 

 especially of girls. In Rome, it had become a well- 

 established custom for mothers to abandon their 

 girl babies at the foot of a particular column. From 

 there some of them were taken by men to be trained 

 for immoral purposes. This at least eased the 

 mother's conscience. Sometimes the parents re- 

 claimed their daughter if they thought she would 

 become useful to them in any way. The practice of 

 selling children existed in medieval England; for we 

 read of bishops threatening parents with excommu- 

 nication if they sold their children. In Japan, the 

 Government bought girls from six to eight years old 

 and trained them as geishas (dancing-girls). Simi- 

 larly, in Siam the parents sell their daughters to 

 managers of theatres. 



