164 UNIVERSALITY OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



relations make a further demand of pay- 

 ment in money. 1 



(6) The custom of purchasing the bride from the 

 father still exists although with no legal 

 recognition among the Ossetes and in certain 

 Russian villages. 



(c) Lastly, the marriage per solidum et denarium. 

 Traces of this are left even in modern 

 France. This particular purchase signified 

 the payment of thirteen silver deniers 

 according to a certain value of the sou. 

 The introduction of these thirteen deniers into 

 the ceremony of marriage can be traced through 

 the middle ages up to the marriage of Louis XVI. 

 when they still appeared. In some parts of France 

 such as Dijon, Bordeaux and Barrois, they may 

 still be met with even nowadays. With the excep- 

 tion of this figurative number of thirteen, character- 

 istic of the primitive origin of the ceremony, this 

 form of marriage has undergone such changes as 

 almost to entirely obliterate its primitive character. 

 This is so, too, with other survivals of the system 

 of marriage by purchase they have come to be 

 only intelligible by means of the comparative 

 method, or by a knowledge of their historical 

 antecedents. 2 



1 Volvok, Journal I' Anthropologie, 1892, p. 579. Kowalevsky, 

 Droit coutumier ossttien, p. 176. 



2 See Paul Viollet, Histoire du droit civil fran^ais ; Paris, 1893, 

 p. 403. 



