l or physical defect.
Such persons live with their nearest relations.

Polygamy is never thought of by the Sakais but bigamy is not an absolute
exclusion although it very rarely takes place because as soon as a woman
sees that her husband is enamoured of another she is the first to
propose a divorce and no recriminations follow her suggestion.

"Your heart" she says "suffers with me, when with her it would be glad.
Well, then, let us separate for I feel that I could not live happily
with another wife of yours".

Should a woman, however, be contented to share the nuptial bed with a
rival you may be quite sure that the very best harmony would reign in
that _menage a trois_.

* * * * *

The Sakai women are born with the instinct of maternity and will never
renounce nursing their own babes unless scarcity of milk or a weak
constitution compels them to do so. These exceptions are, however
extraordinarily rare and they are at the height of their pride when
their little ones are drawing life and strength from their breasts.[11]

There are very few cases of complete sterility or excessive fecundity
amongst them. Hardly ever does a woman have more than four or five
children.

She nurses and takes care of them with great tenderness, delighted at
seeing them grow strong and healthy.

Children are weaned at from seven months (reckoned roughly by the moon)
to two years of age (two seasons of fruit) but generally when they are
about a year old (one season).

The first food given to the baby is a well-cooked pap made with a
certain bulb and the tender leaves of a little plant whose names I do
not remember.

When the little fellow has become accustomed to his new food (whether he
likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name
that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event
of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, or
of pronouncing it badly.

* * * * *

The good-heartedness and maternal kindness of the Sakai woman is
extended even to young animals that have been deprived of their mother.
They will adopt them and bring them up with the same care they bestow
upon their own children or human orphans.

One day a she-boar was caught in a trap, and, as a matter of course, was
cooked and eaten, but soon after a litter, belonging to the victim, was
found and the tiny beasts, only just born, we