down to the present, in practices that have for the most part assumed a playful character. Originally, however, these practices were without doubt of a serious nature, as were all such forms of play that originated in earlier customs. Just as ancient exogamous restrictions are still operative in the prohibitions which the statutes of all cultural peoples place on the marriage of relatives, so the influence of marriage by capture is reflected in some of the usages attending the consummation of marriage, as well as in various customs, such as the purchase of wives and its converse, the dowry, which succeeded marriage by capture. Moreover, the fact that marriage by capture occasionally occurs even in primitive pretotemic culture and that it is practised beyond that circle of tribal organization whose totemic character can be positively proved, indicates that it is presumably older than an exogamy regulated by strict norms of custom. It is just in Australia, that region of the earth where, to a certain extent, the various stages of development of exogamy still exist side by side, that we find other cultural conditions which make it practically impossible to hold that marriage by capture originated in warfare between tribes. Though the woman who is here most likely to become an object of dissension between brothers or other kinsmen may not belong to the same clan and the same totem as the latter, she is nevertheless a member of one of the totems belonging to one of the most closely related clans. A woman of their own clan is too close to the men of the group to be desired as a wife; a woman of a strange tribe, too remote. In the ordinary course of events, moreover, there is no opportunity for meeting women of other tribes. The slave who is captured in war and carried away as a concubine appears only at a far later stage of culture. The original struggle for the possession of a woman, therefore, was not carried on with members of a strange tribe, as though it were to this that the woman belonged. Doubtless also it was only to a slight degree a struggle with the captured woman herself--this perhaps represents a later transference that already paves the way for the phenomena of mere mock-struggles. The real struggle took place between fellow-tribesmen, between men of the same clan, both of whom desired the woman. There is a possibility, of course, that the kinsmen of the woman might oppose her capture. This aspect of the struggle, however, like the opposition of the woman herself, was probably unknown prior to the cultural stage, when the female members of the clan came to be valued, as they are among agricultural and nomadic peoples, because of the services which they render to the family. The theory just outlined, moreover, readily explains the further development of the conditions that precede the consummation of marriage, whereas the theory that marriage by capture originated in warfare is in this respect a complete failure. Valuable