method of accomplishing the result is to leave the infant in some exposed place, where it is either destroyed by animals or starved. It may be cast into the living tomb of a baby tower, or placed in a basket or shelter provided for the purpose, from whence some one may take it to sell into slavery or to adopt if so disposed. In the latter case the motive may be evil and the infant's future may be one of hopeless shame. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, a lifelong resident of China, writes in The Chinese Recorder, October, 1894, as follows: "Of the prevalence of infanticide in China there is unhappily no room for doubt. The question is set at rest by the testimony of the people themselves. Among their moral tracts dissuading from vice and crime a conspicuous place is filled by a class called 'Dissuasives from Drowning Daughters.' Official proclamations may often be seen posted on gates and walls forbidding the practice." Other veteran missionaries, as Dr. Talmage, of Amoy, have reported the results of careful inquiry and observation to the same effect.1 Dr. Abeel, whose diary is quoted in the "Life of Talmage' (p. 69), and whose observation dates back about fifty years from the present time, gave it as his verdict, after repeated investigation in the vicinity of Amoy, that "the number destroyed varies exceedingly in different places, the extremes extending from seventy and eighty per cent. to ten per cent., and the average proportion destroyed in all these places amounting to nearly four tenths, or exactly thirty-nine per cent. In seventeen of these forty towns and villages [visited] my informants declare that one half or more are deprived of existence at birth." "When I reached here thirty-two years ago," writes Rev. J. Macgowan (L. M. S.), of Amoy, China, "there was a pond in the centre of the town known as the 'Babies' Pond.' This was the place where little ones were thrown by their mothers. There were always several bodies of infants floating on its green, slimy waters, and the passers-by looked on without any surprise." The influence of Christianity in Amoy has banished this scene. "As the Church grew," he writes, "the truth spread, and street preachers pointed to this pond as an evidence of the heartlessness of idolatry that tolerated such wickedness, and the people became ashamed. Foundling Institutions were established, which are carried on to-day and which now have fully two thousand children in connection with them. To-day thousands of women are alive who, but for Christianity, would have been put to death. The pond has long ago dried up."2 While, of course, no statement can be made which is other 1 Fagg," Forty Years in South China: Life of John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.," pp. 66-70; Graves, “Forty Years in China," p. 89. 2 "Infanticide is practised in Cheh-kiang Province. One of our native Christians than an estimate, yet it seems beyond question that tens of thousands. (we have seen it named as high as two hundred thousand) of infant girls are annually sacrificed in China. The custom is practised also in Formosa, as Dr. MacKay reports in "From Far Formosa" (p. 298). The testimony concerning the prevalence of infanticide in India before the advent of British rule is hardly less abundant than in China. It may be drawn largely from Indian sources. In Infanticide among the Hindus. a volume on "Medical Jurisprudence," quoted by Wilkins, it is stated that "the murder of female children, whether by the direct employment of homicidal means or by the more inhuman and not less certain measures of exposure to privation and neglect, has for ages been the chief and most characteristic crime of six sevenths of the inhabitants of British India." Syed A. M. Shah states, in an article on "Hindu Women in India," that," among Rajputs, if the child were a girl the poor little creature used often to be killed by her cruel parents, who looked upon her birth as a direct curse from heaven."2 In a lecture on "Kathiawar," delivered by Mr. M. A. Turkhud before the National Indian Association, the lecturer, in speaking of the Jadejas, remarked: "This tribe is noted for the practice of female infanticide. Whenever a child was born, if it was a girl it was immediately killed. How the practice originated is not exactly known, but it was probably due to the ambition among Rajputs to marry their daughters into families higher than their own, and this always involved a ruinous expenditure in dowries. This practice was not confined to the Jadejas alone, but it prevailed among the Sumras and Jethavas also." The lecturer quoted, also, a paragraph from the writings of Colonel Watson upon the same theme. Referring to the method employed in the execution of the crime, the words reported are as follows: "It is not necessary to describe the mode of killing the unfortunate children. There were several methods. It is not difficult to kill a new-born child. 'What labor is there in confessed to me that before she became a Christian she had five daughters, and had drowned them all, simply because she could not afford to bring them up. Our churches are practically anti-infanticide societies."-S. P. Barchet, M.D. (A. B. M. U.), Kinhwa, China. "Infanticide is practised extensively in some parts of China, but is not so common in North China. Here it is chiefly confined to the very poor, to sickly children and illegitimate children. But there is no sentiment against it as wrong. There is no hope of preventing it, except by the higher moral tone Christianity imparts."— Mrs. C. W. Mateer (P. B. F. M. N.), Tungchow, China. 1 Wilkins, Modern Hinduism," p. 431. 2 The Indian Magazine and Review, April, 1894, p. 212. crushing a flower?' said a Jadeja chief, on being asked what means were employed. The crime was formerly so universal that directly a female child was born it was killed by the women of the house, unless the father had given express orders beforehand that it should be reared, and such an order was rarely given. The father never saw the infant himself; he always pretended to be unconscious of the whole affair, and if any one ventured to ask him . . . the answer was, 'Nothing.' The event was always passed over in silence, and even when a girl's life was spared there was no rejoicing." When Kathiawar came under British rule, the Jains, whose chief religious tenet is total abstinence from taking all animal life, expressly stipulated that no cattle should be killed for the use of English troops; yet this was in face of the fact that female infanticide had been practised for ages without the slightest protest. The sacrifice of children in the payment of vows to Indian deities has been "known for untold generations," and not until British legislation had largely abolished the custom were there any signs of its cessation. Has it been entirely checked in India? "1 The question as to the extent of infanticide in India at the present time is more difficult to determine, as under the ban of British law it is carried on more secretly. In fifteen years, however, there have been officially reported twelve thousand five hundred and forty-two cases, and this number represents only a small proportion of the total. The Indian Social Reformer for August 3, 1895, contains the following statement: "Infanticide seems to be largely on the increase in the Madras Presidency. Hardly a week passes without our reading in the papers of painful instances in which new-born babies are either killed or deserted. The 'Sasilekha' rightly attributes this sad state of affairs to the peculiarly rigid and stupid marriage customs of the country, and exhorts all true patriots to do what they can to modify these customs." In a recent issue of The Bombay Gazette is the statement that "female infanticide continues prevalent in Northern India, and the subject comes under review by the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab in a resolution on the Sanitary Commissioner's report. The unenviable notoriety enjoyed by the districts of Jullundur, Amritsar, and Ludhiana,' he remarks, 'by reason of their abnormally high death-rates of female infants, is again brought to notice."" A chapter on infanticide in "Women of the Orient" gives some significant statements from official sources with reference to the state of affairs in India in 1870, and the author comes to this conclusion: “As the result of careful inquiry while in India, I am morally certain that, 1 The Indian Magazine and Review, April, 1896, p. 171. |