the south. The same practice occurs among the Coorgs of
the Western Ghats, among the Nairs at the coastal piedmont of this
range, among the Todas of the mountain stronghold known as the Nilgiri
Hills (peaks 8000 feet or 2630 meters), and it crops out sporadically
among certain mountain Bantu tribes of South Africa.[1351]

[Sidenote: Female infanticide.]

There seems little doubt that polyandry, as Herbert Spencer maintains,
has been adopted as an obvious and easy check upon increase of
population in rugged countries.[1352] It is generally coupled with other
preventive checks. In the Nilgiri Hills, as we found also to be the case
on many Polynesian islands, it is closely associated with female
infanticide.[1353] The Todas in 1867 showed a proportion of two men to
one woman, but later, with the decline of infanticide under British
rule, a proportion of 100 men to 75 women, and a resulting modification
of the institution of polyandry.[1354] It may well be that the paucity of
women suggested this form of marriage, whose expediency as an ally to
infanticide in checking population later became apparent. The Todas are
a very primitive folk of herdsmen, living on the produce of their
buffaloes, averse to agriculture, though not inhibited from it by the
nature of their country, therefore prone to seek any escape from that
uncongenial employment,[1355] and relying on the protected isolation of
their habitat to compensate for the weakness inherent in the small
number of the tribe.

Throughout Tibet and Ladak polyandry works hand in hand with the
lamaseries in limiting population. The conspicuous fact in Tibetan
polyandry is its restriction to the agricultural portion of the
population. The pastoral nomads of the country, depending on their yaks,
sheep and goats, wandering at will over a very wide, if desolate
territory, practice monogamy and polygamy.[1356] The sedentary
population, on the other hand, is restricted to tillable lands so small
that each farm produces only enough for one family. Subdivision under a
divided inheritance would be disastrous to these dwarf estates,
especially owing to possible complications growing out of irrigating
rights.[1357] Polyandry leaves the estate and the family undivided, and
by permitting only one wife to several fraternal husbands restricts the
number of children. It does this also in another way by diminishing the
fertility of the mothers; for all travelers comment upon the paucity of
c