6 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



promiscuous relationships jealousy, in the European 

 sense of the word, appears to be unknown. Hep- 

 worth Dixon found it among the Mormon wives in 

 Salt Lake City, but those unhappy women were all 

 of English or European birth, and were therefore 

 influenced by European training. A traveller who 

 visited Thibet in the last century, and who found, to 

 his surprise, that the natives "clubbed together in 

 matrimony as in trade," says disputes occasionally 

 arose as to which husband was the father of a par- 

 ticular child, but were settled by a judgment of the 

 mother or by a comparison of the child's features 

 with those of its supposed parent. Dr. Livingstone 

 states that the women of an African tribe, on 

 hearing that a man in England could only take one 

 wife, declared that they would not live in such a 

 country. The inmates of Mahomedan harems live 

 together tranquilly, and think it a sign of neglect on 

 the part of their husbands if they are not jealously 

 guarded. 



Another set of customs wholly at variance with 

 European notions relates to what may be called 

 marriage on approval. Balzac observes "that the 

 idea of taking a wife on trial will make more wise 

 men reflect than fools laugh." He was not aware 



