ANTHROPOLOGY* 
119 
healthy human society, however rude; in fact, the absence of definite 
marriage appears incompatible with the continued existence of a tribe. 
Therefore statements of this kind made by former visitors should be 
carefully sifted, and marriage-laws in general deserve careful study. 
The explorer will hardly meet with marriage at so low a stage that the 
union can be described as little beyond annual pairing; but where 
divorce is almost unrestricted, as in some African tribes, there is more 
or less approach to this condition, which is possible, though unusual, 
under such laws as that of Islam. Polygamy, which exists over a large 
part of the globe, is a well-understood system, but information is less 
complete as to the reasons which have here and there led to its opposite 
polyandry, as among the Toda hill-tribes and the Nairs in South India. 
Among customs deserving inquiry are match-making festivals at spring- 
tide or harvest, when a great part of the year’s marriages are arranged. 
This is not only often done among the lower races, but traces of it remain 
in Greece, where the dances at Megara on Easter Tuesday are renowned 
for wife-choosing, and till lately in Brittany, where on Michaelmas Day 
the girls sate in a row decked in all their finery on the bridge of Penze, 
near Morlaix. The custom of bride-capture, where the bridegroom and 
his friends make show of carrying off the bride by violence, is known in 
Europe as a relic of antiquity, as in ancient Borne, Wales within the last 
century or two, or Tyrol at the present day; but in more barbaric regions, 
as on the Malay peninsula or among the Kalmuks of North Asia, it may 
be often met with, practised as a ceremony, or even done in earnest. On 
the other hand, restrictions on marriage between kinsfolk or clansfolk are 
more prominent among the lower races than in the civilised world, but 
their motive is even now imperfectly understood. Partly these restric¬ 
tions take the form we are accustomed to of prohibiting marriage between 
relatives more or less near in our sense, but among nations at a lower 
level they are apt to involve also what is called exogamy or “ marrying- 
out.” A tribe or people—for instance, the Kamilaroi of Australia, or the 
Iroquois of North America—is divided into hereditary clans, members 
of which may not marry in their own clan. In various parts of the 
world these clans are named from some animal, plant, or other object, 
and anthropologists often call such names “ totems/’ this word being 
taken from the native name among Algonquin tribes of North America. 
For an instance of the working of this custom among the Iroquois tribes 
