Note 263 — Chapter II · THEORY OF THE HORDE AND MOTHER-RIGHT

Primitive Family, 132. Other objections are brought forward by this able writer. "It has been suggested that the motive for the murder of female infants is the fear of becoming the object of the predatory instincts of other tribes; whence we must conclude that the tribe which keeps its women alive is tolerably strong; those tribes which lack women cannot, therefore, obtain them by violence to any great extent. It also seems to be a strange thing to kill the female infants from a dread of being exposed to attack, and at the same time to seek to increase the number of women by carrying them off by violence from other tribes."—Ibid., 132.