[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

F 1
RITES OF BIRTH AND INITIATION 233
to acquire wealth and, through wealth, social eminence. Another
reason of perhaps equal importance is the desire of both husband
and wife for constant sexual intercourse, which is prohibited
while the woman is pregnant and perhaps during lactation.
Although the people of Malekula are, in theory, polygynous, it
is only a few men who can afford to have more than one wife,
unless another has been inherited from the maternal uncle or
elder brother; most of the adult male population are perforce
monogamous. It is clear, therefore, that the long period of
continence enforced upon a man as a result of his wife’s being
with child would be disliked and that attempts at abortion
would not uncommonly result. '
There are no details to tell us how this was effected or
attempted in Seniang, but it seems that the woman drank an
infusion made from a certain leaf. In Lagalag two methods
were PRACTISED ; in one the pregnant woman jumped from a tree ;
in the other she drank large quantities of very hot coco-nut
milk. Should the unwanted child be born despite these efforts,
it was, both in Seniang and in the north-west, buried alive in
the ground without any ceremony. In this event no distinction
was made between male and female infants}
As regards the sex of children, it seems that in general a
man desires to have a son rather than a daughter, but in Seniang
there does not appear to be any rite to discover or control the
sex of an unborn child. In Mewun, however, if the husband of
the pregnant woman be a man of Melpmes he will gather some-
thing called mzri, which it seems grows on trees, mix it with
scraped coco~nut and give it to his wife to eat, This will ensure
that her infant shall be a boy. In Lagalag the parents will
sometimes resort to sex-divination, though it is not taken very
seriously. Two of their friends, or it may be they themselves,
take a length of the creeper called neteutep mbau, and hold it
taut between them, each grasping his or her end between the
thumbs and indices of both hands. Then at the signal I———2-3 !
they simultaneously split the_ creeper from the two ends down its
whole length. If it splits so that there is an uneven break along
the edge, the child will be a boy, if with an even break a girl
will be born.
1 The Malekulans do not appear to know of or to practise any methods of
contraception,—C. H. W,