SURVIVALS EXIST IN ALL KINDS OF SOCIETIES 167 



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 Monte- 

 negro, derived doubtless from an exogamous period, 

 are alike survivals of this primitive family system. 

 Further, although both facts and their interpreta- 

 tion 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, Precis de Vhistoire clu droit francais, ii. 326, and 

 Giraud-Teulon in Oriyines du marriage et de la famille primitive, 

 Paris, 1884, p. 138 ; and Starcke, Famille primitive, p. 49. 



