ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 123 



the day of jubilee. This procedure widely prevails among the 

 North American Indians. 



Second. It ofttimes happens that in the vicissitude of life cer- 

 tain groups, or families, of sisters increase in number, while the 

 groups of brothers to whom they belong decrease in number, and 

 vice versa. Under these circumstances a few men are entitled to 

 many wives, and the law holds this to be justice. In such cases it 

 may happen that a man who belongs to a large male group having 

 rights of marriage in a small female group, will, with his friends, 

 capture a bride from some larger group of women. This is always 

 resisted, and conflict ensues. If the capturing party succeed, the 

 law then holds that the warfare was the final arbitrament and the 

 controversy ends ; and if the capturing party fail, the contest must, 

 in like manner, cease. 



Third. Marriage by capture develops into a third form. A 

 man being entitled to more than one woman is challenged by a 

 man who, by the vicissitudes of life and death, is entitled to none, 

 and the right to a woman is thus decided by wager of battle 

 between the two men immediately interested. This duel is gradu- 

 ally regulated by law in such a manner that fatal results do not 

 ensue, and the conflict ends controversy, and thereafter the dispu- 

 tants are, themselves, friends. 



These three forms of marriage — by elopement, by capture, and 

 by duel, are gradually regulated, and come to be recognized as 

 legal, and so communal marriage is developed into polygamic and 

 monogamic marriage ; and thus by a long process the Malayan 

 system of marriage and the Malayan system of kinship are de- 

 veloped into the monogamic family and kinship. But it usually 

 happens that the system of kinship embodied in the terms of 

 relationship, remains longer than the system of marriage, that is, 

 the evolution of language does not keep pace with 'the evolution 

 of customary law, so that we find many tribes having the Malayan 

 system of kinship, yet not having the Malayan system of marriage, 



