chap, vi.] CHECKS TO POPULATION. 141 



During my residence among the Hill Dyaks, I was 

 much struck by the apparent absence of those causes 

 which are generally supposed to check the increase of 

 population, although there were plain indications of sta- 

 tionary or but slowly increasing numbers. The conditions 

 most favourable to a rapid increase of population are, an 

 abundance of food, a healthy climate, and early marriages. 

 Here these conditions all exist. The people produce far 

 more food than they consume, and exchange the surplus 

 for gongs and brass cannon, ancient jars, and gold and 

 silver ornaments, which constitute their wealth. On the 

 whole, they appear very free from disease, marriages take 

 place early (but not too early), and old bachelors and old 

 maids are alike unknown. Why, then, we must inquire, 

 has not a greater population been produced ? Why are 

 the Dyak villages so small and so widely scattered, while 

 nine-tenths of the country is still covered with forest ? 



Of all the checks to population among savage nations 

 mentioned by Malthus — starvation, disease, war, infanti- 

 cide, immorality, and infertility of the women — the last 

 is that which he seems to think least bmportant, and of 

 doubtful efficacy ; and yet it is the only one that seems 

 to me capable of accounting for the state of the popula- 

 tion among the Sarawak Dyaks. The population of Great 

 Britain increases so as to double itself in about fifty years. 

 To do this it is evident that each married couple must 



