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CHAPTER NINE

means of preventing conception, and, as Carr-Saunders[1] says of various tribes, "almost without exception the average number of children is everywhere recorded as small." Carr-Saunders does not specify the methods employed, but cites a number of references to original accounts by explorers and others. Similar evidence of some contraceptive knowledge exists for widely scattered primitive races all over the world. As Carr-Saunders has so recently brought together most of the scattered references to savage races, and their various contraceptive measures, there is no need for me to go into the subject in detail. It is sufficient to remind the reader of my present book that primitive and savage peoples are generally much less ignorant about these matters than are the modern slum-dwelling "civilized" women of our cities to-day.

Some "Savages," for instance, are so expert in control, that as among the Kingsmill Islanders women are reported to have generally only two children and "never more than three."

That Westermarck in his famous and

  1. ↑ A. M. Carr-Saunders (1922): "The Population Problem. A Study in Human Evolution." Pp. 516. Oxford, 1922. See in particular pp. 177-178, pp. 186188, pp. 255-256.

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