36 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



dear or difficult to obtain, clothes were sometimes washed in urine 

 as a substitute for it. 



Dr. Morgan regarded the statement that the Innuits drank sea- 

 water as very remarkable and unparalleled ; he said he had heard 

 that those shipwrecked sailors who remain in the water hold out 

 longest owing to absorption through the pores of their skin, but 

 they eventually die of thirst. 



Mr. Petroff replied that he had employed them to take him out 

 to sea, and seen them drink sea-water, never asking him for any of 

 the fresh water he took with him. 



Mr. Guss asked how far out to sea they ever ventured, and Mr. 

 Petroff answered that they frequently went out of sight of land. 



Dr. A. F. A. King read a paper entitled " The Evolution of 

 Marriage Ceremonies and its import," in which he endeavored 

 to show : 



i. That primitive man, probably, had no marriage ceremony, 

 but was governed in his sexual relations very much after the 

 manner of brute animals, according to the "law of battle" 

 among males, and the law of "sexual selection." 



2. That the beginning of marriage ceremonies grew out of 

 elements appertaining to social evolution-and were not due to any 

 anatomical or physiological changes in the organism, and resulted 

 in the practical setting aside of the old law of " sexual selection j " 

 just as at the present day we know marriages are most frequently 

 determined by qualifications as to property, education, social 

 position, political influence, &c, &c. 



3. By the same factors the law of what he termed " cestruational 

 selection" or "recurrent sexual coincidence" had been practically 

 set aside. The natural working of this law provided that the 

 human female (like the females of other beings) should only admit 

 approaches of the male at periods more or less coincident with the 

 epochs of ovulation. It, therefore, contributed to promote repro- 

 duction and perpetuation of the species. It accorded the female 

 the privilege of consent or refusal. Throughout nature the male 

 was the wooer, the female was wooed. It secured the female the 



