hildren in polyandrous families.

Westermarck lays stress upon the fact that polyandry prevails chiefly in
sterile countries. He regards it less as a conscious device to check
increase of population than a result of the disproportion of males to
females in polyandrous communities. The preponderance of male births he
attributes to the excessive endogamy bordering on inbreeding which tends
to prevail in all isolated mountain valleys; and also, as a possibility,
to the undernourished condition of the parents caused by scanty food
supplies, which Duesing found to be productive of a high percentage of
male births in proportion to female.[1358] The motive of restricting
population seems entitled to more weight than Westermarck concedes to
it; for he slurs over the fact that in Tibet polyandry gives rise to a
large number of superfluous women who fill the nunneries,[1359] while in
the Nilgiri Hills redundant females were eliminated by infanticide. The
fact seems to be that in the institution of polyandry we have a social
and psychological effect of environment, reinforced by a physiological
effect.

[Sidenote: Effects of polyandry and polygamy.]

A comparison of social conditions in the adjoining provinces of
Baltistan and Ladak, which together comprise the Himalayan valley of the
Indus, reveals the character of polyandry as a response to geographic
environment. Both provinces are inhabited by a Mongolian stock, but the
Ladaki living on the uppermost stretch of the basin near Tibet are
Buddhists and polyandrists, while the Baltis farther down the valley are
Mussulmen and polygamists. The Baltis, with their plurality of wives and
numerous children, are wretchedly poor and live in squalor on the verge
of starvation; but as the elevation of their valley ranges only from
4000 to 8500 feet, they are inured to heat, and therefore emigrate in
large numbers to the neighboring Mohammedan province of the Punjab,
where they work as coolies and navvies. The Ladakis, on the other hand,
living 9000 to 13,000 feet above the sea, die of bilious fever when they
reach the lowlands. Cut off from emigration, they curtail population by
means of polyandry and lamaseries. Consequently they show signs of
prosperity, are well fed, well clothed and comfortably housed.[1360]
Baltistan's social condition illustrates in a striking way the power of
an idea like an alien creed, assimilated as the result of close vicinal
location, to counteract for a time