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Show 134 THE DESCENT OF l\IAN. PART I~ 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 ~oes not lay stress enough on what is probably the most ~mportant of all, namely infanticide, especially of female mfants, and the habit of procuring abortion. These practices now prevail in many quarters of the world and infanticide seems formerly to have prevailed, a~ Mr. M'Lennan 55 has shewn, on a still more extensive scale. These practices appear to have odginated in s~~a?"es recognisin¥ the difficulty, or rather the imposSibility of supportmg all the infants that are born Lice~tiousness. may also be added to the foregoin~· chec~s ; 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 arnved at the dignity of manhood he would have been guided more by instinct and less' by reason than are savag~s at the present time. Our early semihuman progemtors would not have practised infanticide . for th e m· s t"m cts, of the lower animals are never so per-' verted as to lead them regularly to destroy their own. ~J 'Primitive Marriage,' 1865. CHAP. IV. MANNER OF DEVELOPMENT. 135 offspring. There would have been no prudential restraint from marriage, and the sexes would have· f:reely united at an early age. Hence the progemitors o£ man would have tended to increase rapidly, bu.t checks of some kind, either periodical or constant, must h:i~ive kept down their numbers, even more severely than wi11h existing savages. What the precise nature of these checks may have been, we cannot say, any more than with most other animals. We know that horses and cattle, which are not highly prolific animals, when first turned loose in South America, increased at an enormous rate. The slowest breeder of all known animals, namely the elephant, would in a few thousand years stock th~ whole world. The increase of every species of monkey must be checked by some means; but not, as Brehm remarks, by the attacks of beasts of prey No one: vvill assume that the actual power of reproduction in the wild horses and cattle of America, was at :furst in any sensible degree increased ; or that, as each district became fully stocked, this same power was dim.i!nished. No doubt in this case and in all others, many checks concur, and different checks under different circumstances; periodical dearths, depending on unfavom-able seasons, being probably the most important of aJ.l So, it will have been wit.b. the early progenitors. of man.. Natural Selection.-We have now seen that man_ is variable in body and mind; and that the variations are induced, either directly or indirectly, by the same. general causes, and obey the same general laws, as with the lower animals. Man has spread widely over the face of the earth, and must have been exposed, during his incessant migrations,56 to the most diversified con- 56 See some good remarks to this effect by W. Stanley Jevons, "A Deduction from Darwin's Theory," 'Nature,' 1869, p. 231. ....... ._, . ....... |