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stom was so wide-spread that in 1842 Major Macpherson reported that in many villages not a single female child could be found. The British Government rescued a number of girls and brought them up, giving them an education. Some of these were afterward given in marriage to respectable Kandh bachelors, "and it was expected that they at least would not outrage their own feeling as mothers by consenting to the destruction of their offspring. Subsequently, however, Colonel Campbell ascertained that these ladies had no female children, and, on being closely questioned, they admitted that at their husbands' bidding they had destroyed them." In the South Sea Islands "not less than two-thirds of the children were murdered by their own parents." Ellis (_P.R_., I., 196-202) knew parents who had, by their own confession, killed four, six, eight, even ten of their children, and the only reason they gave was that it was the custom of the country. "_No sense of irresolution or horror appeared to exist_ in the bosoms of those parents, who deliberately resolved on the deed before the child was born." "The murderous parents often came to their (the missionaries') houses almost before their hands were cleansed from their children's blood, and spoke of the deed with worse than brutal insensibility, or with vaunting satisfaction at the triumph of their customs over the persuasions of their teachers." They refused to spare babies even when the missionaries offered to take care of them (II., 23). Neither Ellis, during a residence of eight years, nor Nott during thirty years' residence on the South Sea Islands, had known a single mother who was not guilty of this crime of infanticide. Three native women who happened to be together in a room one day confessed that between them they had killed twenty-one infants--nine, seven, and five respectively. These facts have long been familiar to students of anthropology, but their true significance has been obscured by the additional information that many tribes addicted to infanticide, nevertheless displayed a good deal of "affection" toward those whom they spared. A closer examination of the testimony reveals, however, that there is no true affection in these cases, but merely a shallow fondness for the little ones, chiefly for the sake of the selfish gratification it affords the parents to watch their gambols and to give
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