From that time forth, religious marriage may be regarded in the light of a survival, having lost all legal importance, while civil marriages are greatly on the increase. Priests, then, the "groomsmen of Lower Brittany, and the blacksmith of Gretna Green may alike be regarded as plain evidences of an institution in process of decline.

II. The family system.-Archaic forms of the family still exist, sometimes as mere vestiges, sometimes as exceptional cases, in countries where only separate families are legally recognized.

1. The Matriarchy.—Traces of the matriarchy, i.e. of the exogamous family of blood relations through the mother, abound among the customs of the inhabitants of the valleys of the Caucasus. Kowelevsky, in his book on the customs of the Ossetes, has dealt with this subject. The vestiges remaining even in France of marriage by capture and the prohibition of certain marriages in Montenegro, derived doubtless from an exogamous period, are alike survivals of this primitive family system. Further, although both facts and their interpretation are rather doubtful, some authorities regard the couvade, a custom which is still in practice among the Basques and also in the Isle of Mark (in Holland), as a vestige of the transition period between the matriarchy and paternal affiliation.1

1 See Viollet, Précis de l'histoire du droit français, ii. 326, and Giraud-Teulon in Origines du marriage et de la famille primitive, Paris, 1884, p. 138; and Starcke, Famille primitive, p. 49.

2. The Patriarchy.-The Patriarchy, which was a system of family community, is still exhibited in the participanze of Italy, the companias de Galicia of Spain, the parsonneries of France, the Hausgenossenschaften of Germany, and the zadrugas of the Balkan peninsular. Besides these, the family system of to-day, according to Sumner-Maine, affords constant evidences of a patria protestas in process of decay and of declining male property rights.

Survivals from the old patriarchal system abound in modern legislation. Take the following examples: (a) The limitations imposed on a testator with

regard to leaving his property away from his family (Civ. Code, 213 and following). (b) The legal opposition to a woman's equality in succession.

The more barbarous laws, if not actually excluding women from succession, at least excluded their succession to landed estate, in order to keep the family property intact. In France the privilege of sex was maintained in some respects, even among the peasants, up to the close of the old regime, and it still exists in the present day in different degrees in Scandinavia, Russia, Servia, and some of the Swiss Cantons.

c) The inequality of the sexes as regards conjugal fidelity.

The privileges of the husband over the wife in this matter are survivals from the time when these obligations were wholly on one side.

(d) Affiliation following on a double marriage.— In some countries, under the old system, a child could only succeed to the property of his parents if he resided with them (excepting in quite exceptional cases). Hence there arose marriages by exchange. In order to compensate the children, the two families, if each had a son and daughter, exchanged them, and bestowed the rights of one upon the other. Under the new law these rights could not be legally claimed, and yet even in the present century they are not wholly unknown. The last marriage by exchange was probably that mentioned by Dupin1 which took place at Gacogne (Niévre) in 1839.

In conclusion then, we have found that while the legislative systems of modern races tend to become more and more alike in main principle, we can yet find vestiges, more or less faint and distorted, but quite recognizable, of the different institutions which dominated the earlier conditions of the different races.

1

Viollet, Histoire du droit civil français, p. 491.

12

PART III

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

THE examples we have been able to give in the first part of this volume make it plain that degenerative evolution exists everywhere. It must be noticed, however, that biological investigation shows that in the evolution of organs certain parts may disappear completely, but also that in the evolution of organisms certain organs may also disappear. This last phenomenon is most common in embryological development, when it is known as ontological abbreviation.1 Sometimes it is the adult stage that is suppressed, this being possible by what is called pædogenesis a precocious appearance and ripening of the sexual organs.2

1In Scalpellum Stroïni, a deep sea Cirripede, the nauplius stage of the larval life is suppressed at least so far as that is a free swimming larva. Here is at least a physiologically complete suppression of a whole larval stage.

2 Axolotl. Most salamanders pass through a larval stage in which they are aquatic and perform their respiration by means of external gills. In this condition they are incapable of reproduction, and must undergo metamorphosis to secure propagation of the species. In the case of Amblystoma, however, a Mexican salamander, the larval form of which is called the Axolotl, reproduction is possible in the larval stage. Thus most individuals of

Sometimes a degenerative transformation becomes still more complete and wonderful; not only may a larval stage or an adult stage be completely suppressed, but a multicellular organism may even lose its power of dying. It is known that the simplest forms of life are practically immortal : when a microbe like micrococcus divides nothing dies, and throughout the whole series of successive divisions the primitive life is preserved. On the other hand, in the case of higher animals such as man there are both mortal somatic cells and reproductive cells which by means of conjugation become practically immortal. The mortality of the somatic cells is evidently an acquisition, an advantage fixed by natural selection; but there exist multicellular organisms evidently derived from creatures which had acquired the division into mortal somatic and immortal reproductive cells and which have lost it since. All the cells of their body are able to avoid death by conjugation. This occurs in many conjugate algæ like spirogyra this species do not actually reach the adult stage. According to Boas writing on Neotenie in Gegenbaur's Festschrift, 1896, this probably happens in the case of all the perennibranchiate urodeles.

Ranunculaceœ. On page 85 we showed that in Ranunculus aquatilis there are produced first submerged leaves, and afterwards floating lobed leaves, and that the flowers are produced in the axils of the floating leaves. Some forms of the plant living in deep water produce only lacinated leaves, in the axils of which by a kind of pædogenesis the flowers are produced. In other species (Ranunculus fluitans and R. divaricatus) the pædogenesis has become definitely established and no floating leaves are formed.