Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/270

obviously, the destruction of the procreated embryo or the infant after birth. A race still in this stage of development is seen in the inhabitants of Futuna, where according to Smith^[1] "It was not even felt as a shame for a mother to kill her children. Some there are who have destroyed as many as six. Ordinarily the child was crushed before birth by pressing the body with heavy stones, at other times they were stifled at birth, or were buried alive in the sand."

Many of the advocates of birth control nowadays are little equipped with historically accurate knowledge, hence it has become the custom to speak as though contraception were a very modern invention and but recently spread over the world. The source of this misconception will be dealt with in a later chapter. Meanwhile, as there appears to exist no memoir on the early history of the limitation of populations I have collected a few references to the subject, which, like fragmentary glimpses of crags and hill tops show that a landscape lies behind the fog-cloud of the valley of time.

We may legitimately argue that if