Note 74 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Even under “conditions of civilization,” however, eugenists hold that more male infants than female are born, but fewer reach maturity. Among primitive peoples the disproportion seems greater; that is, except among those tribes where the women are deliberately fattened—supposedly to enhance their beauty—as is the case with certain of the African tribes; or except among those where polygamy exists, which Frazer suggests may tend to increase the proportion of females (see Totemism and Exogamy, vol. i.).