The practice of the patriarch or head of the family being the priest, is a survival from ancient times, and was customary amongst Aryan tribes, as is evidenced by the Vedas. Mr Kingsmill, in his ‘Ethnological Sketches from the Dawn of History,’ says that the Djow, or Chau, who founded the first historical empire in China, B.C. 1122, were an Aryan race, and their ruler, “the Djow Wang,” was not so much supreme ruler as supreme priest. He alone could perform sacrifices to the memory of the mystical ancestors of the house. In each State a similar position of affairs was to be noticed. The Emperor of China is the high priest of the State religion as well as the ruler of the empire. At times a youth serenades a girl alone, accompanying himself upon a peculiarly shaped two-stringed banjo; at other times he is accompanied by the village band. If the lad considers that he has won the lady’s affection, he asks his parents, or the _kumlung_ of his family, to obtain the consent of her relations, and to arrange for the marriage. If an illegitimate child is born, twenty-four rupees as well as the spirit-fine has to be paid to the _kumlung_ of the girl’s family, and the man must likewise provide a sacrifice of an ox, or pig, or fowl, according to the requirement of the spirit of the woman’s family. No other claim can be made on the man, and the woman has to support the child. According to Dr M‘Gilvary, the custom of levying the spirit-fine is strictly adhered to amongst the nobility as well as amongst the people. As an instance, he told me that on sickness occurring in the palace at Zimmé inquiry is at once made, and if any breach of delicacy has occurred, the male culprit is fined, and the spirits of the royal family are appeased. In case of the act having been a breach of the seventh commandment and the act has been between a serf and a slave of the palace, the man must either pay the spirit-fine and seventy-two rupees, the legal redemption price of the woman, or marry her and become a slave. The culprit, if a noble, is merely mulcted in the spirit-fine required by the spirits of the family, and is free from other charge. In cases of adultery, forty rupees has to be paid to the injured husband, as well as the spirit-fine. If the husband refuses to receive his wife back after her misconduct, he must hand the forty rupees received by him to her family, who must receive her. The Zimmé Shans, as a rule, are a chaste people, and the few soiled doves in Zimmé have flown there from Siam.