Properly, an adoption, to be legal, ought to be registered at the office of the Board of Rites, but this practice has fallen into disuse, and it is sufficient to give public notice of the fact among the two families concerned. An adoption once made cannot be void except by a decree from the Tribunal of Rites, which is difficult to obtain. In practice, the system of adoption results in many scandals, quarrels, jealousies, and all the train of evils which one familiar with men and women, as they are, might argue a priori without the facts at hand. The iron fetters of Asiatic institutions cannot suppress human nature. Primogeniture is the rigid rule. Younger sons, at the time of their marriage, or at other important periods of life, receive paternal gifts, now more, now less, according to usage, rank, the family fortune, etc., but the bulk of the property belongs to the oldest son, on whom the younger sons look as their father. He is the head of the family, and regards his father’s children as his own. In all Eastern Asia the bonds of family are much closer than among Caucasian people of the present time. All the kindred, even to the fifteenth or twentieth degree, whatever their social position, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, officials or beggars—form a clan, a tribe, or more exactly one single family, all of whose members have mutual interests to sustain. The house of one is the house of the other, and each will assist to his utmost another of the clan to get money, office, or advantage. The law recognizes this system by levying on the clan the imposts and debts which individuals of it cannot pay, holding the sodality responsible for the individual. To this they submit without complaint or protest.