INFANTICIDE. 
329 
scarcity, killed and eaten by their parents, to 
satisfy hunger. With the Society Islanders, the rules 
of the Areoi institutions, and family pride, were the 
principal motives to its practice. Excepting the 
latter, which operates in a small degree, none of 
these motives actuate the Sandwich Islanders; 
those, however, by which they are influenced are 
equally criminal. Some of the natives have told us 
that children were formerly sacrificed to the sharks 
infesting their shores, and which through fear they 
had deified; but as we have never met with per¬ 
sons who have ever offered any, or seen others do 
it, this possibly may be only report. The prin¬ 
cipal motive with the greater part of those who 
practise it, is idleness; and the reason most fre¬ 
quently assigned, even by the parents themselves, 
for the murder of their children, is, the trouble of 
bringing them up. In general they are of a 
changeable disposition, fond of a wandering man¬ 
ner of life, and find their children a restraint, pre¬ 
venting them, in some degree, from following their 
roving inclinations. Like other savage nations, 
they are averse to any more labour than is abso¬ 
lutely necessary. Hence they consider their chiL 
dren a burden, and are unwilling to cultivate a 
little more ground, or undertake the small addi¬ 
tional labour necessary to the support of their off¬ 
spring during the helpless periods of infancy and 
childhood. In some cases, when the child has 
been sickly, and the parents have grown tired of 
nursing and attending it, they have been known, 
in order to avoid further attendance and care, to 
bury it at once ; and we have been very credibly 
informed, that children have been buried alive, 
merely because of the irritation they have dis¬ 
covered, On these occasions, when the child has 
