134 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
Part L. 
in large numbers. As famines are periodical, depending 
chiefly on extreme seasons, all tribes must fluctuate in 
number. They cannot steadily and regularly increase, 
as there is no artificial increase in the supply of food. 
Savages when hardly pressed encroach on each other’s 
territories, and war is the result ; but they are indeed 
almost always at war with their neighbours. They are 
liable to many accidents on land and water in their search 
for food ; and in some countries they must suffer much 
from the larger beasts of prey. Even in India, districts 
have been depopulated by the ravages of tigers. 
Malthus has discussed these several checks, but he 
does not lay stress enough on what is probably the most 
important of all, namely infanticide, especially of female 
infants, and the habit of procuring abortion. These 
practices now prevail in many quarters of the world, 
and infanticide seems formerly to have prevailed, as 
Mr. M‘Lennan 55 has shewn, on a still more extensive 
scale. These practices appear to have originated in 
savages recognising the difficulty, or rather the impos- 
sibility of supporting all the infants that are born. 
Licentiousness may also be added to the foregoing 
checks ; but this does not follow from failing means of 
subsistence ; though there is reason to believe that in 
some cases (as in Japan) it has been intentionally 
encouraged as a means of keeping down the population. 
If we look back to an extremely remote epoch, before 
man had arrived at the dignity of manhood, he would 
have been guided more by instinct and less by reason 
than are savages at the present time. Our early semi- 
human progenitors would not have practised infanticide* 
for the instincts of the lower animals are never so per- 
verted as to lead them regularly to destroy their own 
55 ‘Primitive Marriage,’ 1865. 
