Mr Punnett, On the Proportion of the Sexes, etc. 481 



On the Proportion of the Sexes among the Todas. By 

 R. C. Punnett, M.A., Gonville and Caius College. With a 

 Note by W. H. R. Rivers, M.A., St John's College. 



[Received 16 May 1904.] 



The data given in the present paper were extracted from 

 the genealogical statistics collected by Dr Rivers during his 

 recent stay among the Todas, and I am greatly indebted to him 

 for allowing me to make use of them previous to publication, 

 as well as for sundry information concerning this people. From 

 these genealogical tables I have been able to obtain details of 359 

 families comprising 1,124 individuals, the average size of a family 

 being 3*1. By a family is to be understood the number of children 

 born of the same mother, though not necessarily indebted for exist- 

 ence to the same father. The data extend back over some 80 — 90 

 years, those for later generations being the more extensive. As 

 the two Toda tribes, Tartharol and Teivaliol, do not intermix, they 

 have been considered separately. The data for the Tartharol tribe 

 are more full, comprising 249 families with 773 individuals, as 

 against the smaller Teivaliol tribe with 351 individuals in 110 

 families. In every family the order of individual births is known. 



On sorting out the sexes, the results obtained (see Table I.) 

 confirm the conclusion arrived at by previous writers, viz., that 



Table I. 



the males are greatly in excess of the females. This holds good 

 for both tribes, though the excess is considerably more marked in 

 the case of the Teivaliol Todas. 



VOL. XII. PT. VI. 



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