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). In Infanticide among the Hindus. 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. 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."1 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. 'What labor is there in It is not difficult to kill a new-born child. 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? 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. at the very lowest estimate admissible, fully one third of the girls born among the natives of that country are still secretly murdered." 1 The British Government has waged strenuous warfare against infanticide in India, but, owing to the extreme difficulty of discovery and the impossibility of fixing the guilt, it has not been as successful in the matter of infant murder as in the case of other inhuman practices. The crime has been prohibited by British law since 1802, and this proscriptive legislation has gradually been extended to all parts of India, and more recently it has been enacted that in all proclaimed villages the proportion of girls born should bear a certain ratio to the boys, as it has been clearly indicated by experience that the normal proportion is about equal. A strict surveillance by the proper officials throughout Northern and Western India has secured at the present time a ratio of four girls to six boys, which is a decided improvement upon the past. The secrecy of the zenana renders it almost impossible to prove a case of infanticide, and, even though the act of murder should not be violently committed, the object can be attained with almost equal certainty by neglect. In the last census the relative number of girls to one hundred boys shows a marked improvement over past records. The average for all India is 92 girls to every 100 boys. The lowest recorded ratio is 697 in Quetta, British Baluchistan, and the next is 83 in Sindh, while in Rajputana, once so noted for the prevalence of infanticide, it has risen to 8710. It is worthy of note that in Upper Burma, where woman occupies a position of exceptional honor, the recorded ratio is 102 girls to every 100 boys. It is to be hoped that with the progress of Christianity and the abolition of the absurd extravagances of narriage the natural heart of India will revolt from the heinousness of this crime, and infanticide will disappear forever. 79 48 00 In the Pacific Islands infanticide has prevailed to a frightful extent under circumstances of exceptional heartlessness and cruelty. "The early missionaries have testified that not less than two thirds of the children were put to death. Especially were female children killed. 'Why should the girl live?' they [the natives] would say. 'She cannot poise the spear, she cannot wield the club.' A mother would often strangle her own child, with one hand holding the nostrils and the other holding the mouth, and then herself dig the grave and bury the child." 2 The above statement was made concerning the Fiji Islands, but it is substantially true with reference to almost the entire island world.3 1 Houghton, "Women of the Orient," p. 71. 2 Alexander, "The Islands of the Pacific," p. 394. " 3 Michelsen, Cannibals Won for Christ," pp. 133, 154; Gill, "Life in the The Samoan Group seems to have presented a remarkable exception to other sections of Polynesia, as infanticide is said never to have prevailed there.1 As we enter the "habitations of cruelty" in the Dark Continent, the crime of infanticide is found in ghastly proportions. Among certain savage races the advent of twins seems to excite " The doom of twins in Africa. instinct of fear and brutality. In an address every at a Ladies' Meeting of the Church Missionary Society, Mrs. Hill, the wife of the lamented Bishop Hill, of Western Equatorial Africa, made the following statement : The birth of twins is considered a great curse, and the woman that has twins is disgraced for life afterwards, and she is compelled to throw the twins into the wood, where they are left to die. In a town five miles distant from where we were there are five hundred infants annually sacrificed in these two ways: they are murdered by hundreds, and left to die in the way which I have stated."2 Dr. Laws (U. P. C. S.), in writing from Old Calabar, a neighboring mission to Bishop Hill's, says, "It is almost impossible for any one at home to imagine the horror with which the birth of twins is regarded by the natives, and especially by the native women." In the same connection he refers to the "destruction of twins" as one of the great obstacles to the progress of Christianity in Old Calabar, inasmuch as the missionaries insist upon an entire change of custom as essential to the profession of Christianity.3 The missionary literature of other societies at work in Africa, especially that of the Universities' Mission and the London Missionary Society, yields similar statements with reference to "the fearful amount of child murder" prevailing in Africa. In some instances the heinous guilt of the little victim is declared to be that it "cut its upper teeth first." In other instances, strange to say, its fatal offense is reported as "cutting a lower tooth before the upper ones." In both cases the father was the executioner, fearing death himself if the infant lived. If a child should cut a tooth before birth its doom is sealed, according to what is known as the custom of the "vigego."4 Southern Isles," p. 213; Alexander, "The Islands of the Pacific," pp. 28, 77, 159, 268, 413. 1 "Infanticide, wholly unknown in Samoa, prevailed throughout the Tokelau and Ellice groups."-Rev. J. E. Newell (L. M. S.), Malua Institution, Samoa. 2 The Church Missionary Intelligencer, June, 1893, p. 437. Cf. also Faulkner, "Joseph Sidney Hill," p. 144. 3 The Missionary Record, December, 1893, p. 354. ▲ Central Africa, January, 1894, p. 8; Ibid., May, 1895, p. 68; The Missionary Record, January, 1893, p. 23. |