MARRIAGE AMONG THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES. 325 



appear ; so likewise the plant, when it for some reason not easily 

 seen departs from the normal, lets the thoughtful student of 

 plant nature get glimpses of truth not otherwise vouchsafed to 

 him. Teratology is not chaos, neither are malformations mean- 

 ingless. The unit of origin of parts is no better demonstrated 

 than through some of the " inebriated " conditions as found from 

 time to time in the kingdom of plants. 



MARRIAGE AND KINSHIP AMONG THE ANCIENT 

 ISRAELITES. 



By Colonel A. B. ELLIS. 



IN the article on Polyandry which appeared in The Popular 

 Science Monthly for October, 1891, we had occasion to refer 

 to the custom of raising up seed to a deceased elder brother as in- 

 dicating that the Israelites had formerly practiced that form of 

 polyandry in which the associated husbands are brothers ; and in 

 the present article we propose to pursue the investigation there 

 hinted at, and to inquire to what extent the Israelites conformed 

 to what appear to have been the normal phases of evolution of 

 marriage and kinship in early times. To clear the ground, it will 

 be convenient to commence by briefly stating what those phases 

 were: 



1. There was a primitive condition of which we can ascertain 

 with certainty little or nothing; but, from the analogy of the 

 lower animals, we infer that unions were not for life, and that 

 couples paired for as long as it suited them, or until the child was 

 weaned. 



2. This condition was upset by the practice of female infanti- 

 cide, which caused men to become much more numerous than 

 women. 



:>. The inevitable result of this disproportion was either that 

 the men of a community held their women in common, or that 

 several men attached themselves to each woman, forming unions 

 of the type of the ruder polyandry. 



4. At the same time men strove to add to the number of their 

 women by seizing and carrying off the women of other commu- 

 nities. Marriage by capture commenced. 



5. As a result of a community in women, or of polyandry, and 

 also as a result of marriage by capture, the paternity of children 

 would always be uncertain. Hence, fathers being unknown, there 

 could be no kinship in the male line. Kinship and descent would 

 be traced solely through mothers, as we find is the case among 

 nearly all the lower races at the present day. 



