instances of survival. We will take as examples those rudimentary types most nearly approaching to the primitive type, i.e. the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Fuegoes of Cape Horn, and the Australian tribes.

(a) The Veddahs, who have lived in the jungles of Ceylon for centuries, either as separate families, or in groups of two or three families, appear to have formerly possessed a much more complicated social organization. According to Max Müller, they were not formerly so low in the scale of humanity; he says that their language, if not their blood, betrays their "distant connection with Plato, Newton, and Goethe."

In their language, folk-lore, and clothing, these retain characteristic vestiges of a former condition. Take for instance the carefully observed practice of piercing the ears of children at the age of three or four years, although eventually only a small number of them could wear ornaments in them, others having to be content with small pieces of twig, coiled leaves, or bits of straw.

"This custom," says Deschamps, "is extremely old, and we may suppose as there is no other signification in it than the prospect of ultimately wearing jewels-that it dates back from a time when the people were not in so low and destitute

1 "Aggregates formed by a simple repetition of hordes or clans without any such interrelations between them as to form intermediate groups between the whole collection and the individual clans." Durkheim, les Règles de la méthode sociologique, París, F. Alcan, 1895.

a condition as they are now. Having in more civilized times worn jewels in their ears, the custom of piercing the ears in youth persists, though the jewels may be lacking." 1

(b) Bridges says that according to a tradition which is probably true, the Fuegoes, until quite recently, submitted their young men to a sort of initiatory trial when they attained to adolescence. They were taken into a hut (the kina) set apart for the purpose, and there underwent certain tests, including a rigorous fast. Bridges adds that the kina was also the theatre of mysterious and bizarre scenes of very ancient origin, the rôles of which, now relegated to men only, were entirely performed by women. Contrary to Giraud-Teulon who cites these facts as evidence of the former existence of a matriarchy, the fêtes of the kina seem to have quite disappeared from among the natives of Orange Bay.

Dr Hyades, however, mentions a survival of the old custom. "The custom is still observed of submitting young girls to a fast at the time of puberty, but this fast is less severe than that already mentioned as undergone by the boys; the same good advice is then given them by their parents, as was formerly bestowed upon the boys in the Kina." 2

1 Emile Deschamps, l'Anthropologie, 1891, t. ii., pp. 297 and following.

2 Mission scientifique du cap Horn, 1882-1883, t. vii. Anthropologie, Ethnographie, by P. Hyades and J. Deniker; Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1891, p. 377.

(c) Recent researches into the family system among the Australian tribes has brought a number of survivals to light. This is especially the case with regard to the careful researches of Fison and Howitt who have shown that, independently of their tribal divisions—which are really territorial groups-the Australians are divided up into clans or sexual groups comprising all the individuals with the same Kobong.2

The members of these groups are regarded as members of the same family, and may never, under any circumstance, intermarry, under pain of being driven out of the clan and hunted like wild beasts. Sometimes individuals of antagonistic tribes living at several hundred miles' distance from one another and speaking different languages have the same Kobong. The law of classes remains active; a captor may not violate a prisoner belonging to his group, but a stranger may enter into relations with the women of another tribe, so long as the tribe belongs to a class related to his own. This system of relationship can only be explained as being a survival from a former period in which all persons with the same Kobong belonged to the same group. This is a disputed point, however,

1 Fison and Howitt, Kurnaï and Kamilaroi (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1884).

2 "The Kobong of a man is the animal or plant, the name of which he bears and reveres as a protecting spirit" (Starcke).

3 Starcke, la Famille primitive (Bibl. sciens. intern., Paris, F. Alcan, 1891, p. 22).

for besides this very likely hypothesis, undoubted survivals remain of intermarriage by groups or sexual groups. In the writings of Fison and Howitt, we find the two following instances of this in two tribes which, according to them, severally represent the highest and lowest in the scale of civilization, among those with which they came in contact.1

(d) The tribe called Kunandaburi was divided into two exogamous classes: Mattara and Yungo. Theoretically all the Yungos whether male or female were regarded as the males of the Mattaras, and vice versa. In point of fact, however, only one vestige of the primitive communal marriage remained the jus primæ noctis which was the prerogative of all the contemporaries of the husband belonging to the same group.

(e) The tribe called Narrinyeri which represented a more advanced stage of civilization, was equally divided into two sexual groups, but in reality, marriage was strictly individual. One survival remained, however, of the former system. When a man captured an alien bride, all the men of his own generation and belonging to the same group possessed the right of jus primæ noctis.

3. We have seen that instances of survival are rare in some countries because modifications are only effected slowly, and in others because changes are effected very quickly and useless institutions

1 Fison and Howitt, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1882, p. 35.

are eliminated root and branch. It is in countries like England, where modifications are brought about with a due respect for old customs and traditions that ceremonies, institutions and customs exhibit the greatest number of survivals.

§ 2. Survivals of ancient forms of marriage and of the family in Modern Europe.

We think we may regard it as proved that all societies exhibit instances of survival, but in order to further demonstrate the universal character of retrogressive evolution, we shall show, by means of a careful study of one particular institution, that vestiges of former institutions are neither rare nor exceptional, taking as examples the various forms of marriage and of the family throughout Modern Europe.

1. Forms of Marriage. From archaic times up to our own, we find that among modern nations, marriage by capture, marriage by purchase, and marriage with the consent of the woman have been successively followed by marriage by simple consent, religious marriage (in facie Ecclesice) and civil marriage,1 and that survivals remain of all the forms of marriage anterior to civil marriage.2

1 Paul Viollet, Histoire du droit civil Français, p. 424 and following. Paris, Larose & Forcel, 1893.

2 Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, 1892, p. 418 (when the mode of contracting a marriage altered, the earlier mode, from having been a reality, survived as ceremony").

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