310 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 317 



During the past winter, which was an un- 

 usuall3- severe one at sea, the fish commission 

 succeeded in hatching thirty-five million cod-eggs, 

 bringing the young up by hand, so to speak, to 

 the age of self-feeding adolescence, and turning 

 them loose into the ocean. This crop will be 

 * ripe ' four or five years hence. The fish commis- 

 sion will also attempt to repeople our coastal 

 waters with halibut, the supply of this valuable 

 food-fish having been depleted in waters where it 

 was once common. The attempt will probably be 

 first made to plant the halibut in Chesapeake Bay. 

 Advices just received from New Zealand state that 

 a million and a half white-fish ova, sent by Pro- 

 fessor Baird from Northville, Mich., last Decem- 

 ber, to Sir Julius Vogel of New Zealand, arrived 

 there in January in excellent condition, only five 

 hundred having died. 



CRUELTY OF OLD CUSTOMS. 



We have several times referred to the case of 

 Eukmibhai, the native lady whose wrongs aroused 

 so general a feeling of sympathy in England and 

 India ; but, as the case now appears to be on the 

 point of reaching a crisis, it may be well to re- 

 capitulate the facts briefly, as given by the Cal- 

 cutta correspondent of the London Times. Ruk- 

 mibhai M'as married, according to Hindoo usage, 

 at the age of eleven, to a youth some years her 

 senior. She remained at her parents' house, was 

 carefully educated, and grew up, according to all 

 accounts, into a refined and highly cultivated 

 lady. Some eighteen months ago she published 

 in the Times of India, under the nom de plume of 

 'A Hindoo lady,' a series of forcible and striking 

 letters on the miseries entailed on her sex in 

 India by the barbarous customs of infant-mar- 

 riage and enforced widowhood. Last year her 

 husband tried to get her to live with him, and, on 

 her refusing, instituted a suit for the restitution 

 of conjugal rights, in the Bombay high court. 

 The case was tried in the first instance by Mr. Jus- 

 tice Pinhey, when, it having been proved that the 

 husband was too poor to support her, was utterly 

 ignorant and uneducated, — in fact, a mere coolie, 

 — and was, moreover, consumptive, the judge ex- 

 pressed the opinion that it would be a barbarous, 

 cruel, and revolting thing to compel her to live 

 with such a man. He further held that such suit 

 could not lie under Hindoo law, and dismissed it. 



The husband appealed, and the case was argued 

 before the chief justice and Mr. Justice Bayley. 

 Those learned judges, while expressing their en- 

 tire sympathy with Rukmibhai, felt compelled to 

 rule that Mr. Justice Pinhey was wrong in law. 



and remanded the case to the lower court for trial 

 on its merits. It has now been reheard before 

 Mr. Justice Farran. Rukmibhai's counsel could 

 only repeat that his client had never consented to 

 the marriage, and never regarded the man as her 

 husband ; that the husband was poor, ignorant, 

 and unhealthy ; and that if ordered to return to 

 him she would be forced to disobey, and was pre- 

 pared to take the consequences. The court had 

 no option save to pass an order that she should 

 join her husband within a month. Should she 

 fail to do so, she would be liable to six months' 

 imprisonment. The case has excited much sym- 

 pathy among the Anglo-Indian community. The 

 English newspapers are publishing articles and 

 letters on the subject, and steps are being taken in 

 Bombay to raise a fund on her behalf. Among 

 the native community, however, hardly a single 

 voice, except that of Mr. Malabari, a Parsee gen- 

 tleman, has been raised in her favor, and the so- 

 called reformers who agitate loudly for represen- 

 tative institutions, etc., say no word for the altera- 

 tion of the cruel law which the Bombay court has 

 been reluctantly compelled to enforce. 



Upon this case the Times comments as fol- 

 lows : " There can be no doubt to which side 

 opinion in this country will incline. Our corre- 

 spondent tells us a tale of monstrous wrong and 

 of injustice in the disguise of law. But the dis- 

 guise, unfortunately, is impenetrable. The law 

 is the law, and in the view of Rukmibhai's fel- 

 low-countrymen there is nothing shocking or re- 

 volting in the end which it has been employed to 

 serve. The Hindoo marriage-law can claim, with 

 justice, to have the sanction of immemorial usage. 

 Whether it is based or not on a correct interpre- 

 tation of the sacred books, — and there is room 

 for grave doubt on this point, — it has prevailed 

 for some thirty centuries, and it is closely inter- 

 woven with the moral and religious sentiments 

 of the people. Religion pronounces that every 

 Hindoo girl must be married. The parent who 

 has an unmarried daughter of full age in his 

 house is not only an offender against social 

 usage, but is guilty of a religious crime, threat- 

 ened with puishment in a future slate, and one 

 which his outraged neighbors will not be sat- 

 isfied to leave to its deferred theological sanc- 

 tion. The father would be a degraded man. 

 His daughter, therefore, must be married to 

 some one, and if no fit person is forthcoming, 

 she must be joined to some unfit person, and this 

 at the earliest age possible, so as to settle the mat- 

 ter and make things safe for the father, Ruk- 

 mibhai has been treated with somewhat excep- 

 tional favor in having had her marriage ceremony 

 put off until she was eleven years of age. Many 



