[321] AVERY, "Races of the Indo-Pacific Oceans," _Am. Antiquarian_, VI, 366. The death penalty also appears in New Zealand: RUSDEN, I, 21. [322] WAITZ, _Anthropologie_, V, 106, 107. "When the wife has broken the marriage vow, the husband may put her away, returning her property; but when the man is guilty of this crime, or has even made himself suspected of it, his fate is worse; for then all the women of the neighborhood troop together and fall upon the offender with his possessions, who is lucky if he gets off with a whole skin. His landed property, his house, and everything he has are completely destroyed. If the husband does not bear himself humbly or friendly enough towards his wife, or if otherwise she is no longer pleased with him, she abandons him and goes to her parents, who then undertake the same work of destruction. Therefore many men are not willing to marry, and they live with paid women." [323] For examples of all these customs read WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 124 ff. On the sacrifice of widows in India and elsewhere, explained usually as an evidence of _patria potestas_ under influence of ancestor-worship, consult ZIMMER, _Altindisches Leben_, 328 ff.; KOHLER, "Indisches Ehe- und Familienrecht," _ZVR._, III, 376 ff.; LETOURNEAU, _L'évolution du mariage_, chap. xv; WAKE, _Marriage and Kinship_, 437 ff.; HELLWALD, _Die mensch. Familie_, 478-80 (India), 381 (China). As a final result of his minute examination, Westermarck concludes that there is "not a shred of genuine evidence for the notion that promiscuity ever formed a general stage in the social history of mankind." The hypothesis, he declares, is "essentially unscientific." How, then, it may be asked, can the series of phenomena adduced by McLennan and others to support that hypothesis be otherwise explained?