138 T. P. ANDERSON STUART. 
escape? This seems to me quite probable, for we know in very 
many ways that the aboriginals ascribe to the fluid the most 
wonderful life-giving qualities, and they are quite capable of such 
reasoning. Moreover, there is direct evidence of the validity of 
this suggestion, for I have often been told by pioneers and others 
that the aboriginal women deliberately empty the vagina after 
coition, with the view of preventing inpregnation. The power 
of the fluid to impregnate is thus clearly recognised. 
If the custom is not to be considered as a mere rite, the question 
of utility or effect must be discussed. The statements of the 
blacks themselves, as we have seen, do not permit of any certain 
conclusion to be drawn. White observers, too, give unsatisfactory 
accounts, some say that it really limits production, some that the 
children are just as numerous, some make no remark on that 
head at all. 
Miklouho Maclay’s informant Mr. B told him that he had 
actually seen the fluid escape in coitd, and this is indeed what 
one would expect from the state of the parts. Milne Robertson 
argues that the edges of the groove will be brought together 
coitd, and so a sort of temporary channel be established as in birds. 
Contemplation of the subject of these photographs leads me to 
_ the opposite conclusion ; it seems to me, rather, that the bulging 
corpora cavernosa will open the urethral groove wider and wider. 
Indeed is is wholly misleading to compare the natural corpus 
. Spongiosum of birds to the mutilated spongy body of these me». 
I believe, then, that the condition does prevent the entrance of 
the full charge of the fluid. This, however, does not imply 
absolute sterility, for it is of course well known that an extremely 
small quantity of the spermatic fluid is necessary to fecundation. 
It is also known that if the fluid merely bathe or touch the 
external parts the spermatozoa can make their way up the whole 
length of the passage by their own motion and so effect fecunda- 
tion. But in the mika condition the base of the intromittent 
organ and the pudenda will be so bathed in the fluid that the 
movements of the parts will certainly smear the lower part of 
