744 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
People are put to death in various ways, strangling and behead- 
ing being the most common. Sometimes, however, the criminals are 
slowly hied to death ; they are gashed with tiger-grass splinters, care 
being taken to avoid the main arteries, or they are tied to a pole, 
gradually mutilated, cut to pieces, and literally thrown piecemeal 
to the vultures. Occasionally persons are burned to death. If a 
person is strangled or beheaded, the body lies where it falls to serve 
as a warning to evil-doers ; no one is permitted to remove it on pain 
of death. Adultery and murder are, as a rule, punished by death, 
but generally the payment of a heavy fine is considered sufficient for 
the latter crime. The hand, nose, or ears may be cut off for theft, 
the hand being disarticulated at the wrist-joint. One meets a consi- 
derable number of people minus nose or ears, the loss of which is 
considered a great disgrace, not so much for the fault which has 
been committed, but for having been found out. Small offences are 
punished by the stocks or by flagellation. Prisoners may be said to 
be unknown. On the whole, justice is administered fairly, but the 
punishments tend towards severity. This is especially the case after 
an appeal to the higher courts. 
Causes that Limit Population — 1. Conditions of Marriage . — 
Youths of about 16 and girls of 14 marry, but there are no restric- 
tions to marriage at any age after arriving at puberty, if the husband 
has enough property to pay the dowry. Owing to the frequency of 
polygamy, however, a large number of the poorer men are unable to 
marry, and this notwithstanding the larger excess of females over 
males, being about 3J to 1. This preponderance of females over 
males is due to three causes — (1) more females are born than males; 
(2) a great number of males are killed in war; and (3) there is a 
constant influx of women into the country as prisoners of war. I 
have made some observations with regard to the excess of female 
births which may be of interest, namely, that the very great pro- 
portion of children born of newly-caught female slaves are girls. 
This point is all the more noticeable, because I found that it is 
only in the first births that girls predominate so largely over boys. 
To make this clear, I may give the following figures: — Of 300 
Waganda women observed 9, or 3 per cent., appeared to be sterile ; 
291 had children. The male first births were 144, the female first 
births were 147. Of 500 women who had been captured, 12 only, 
