according to the primitive views of barter and exchange, can consist only in a partial right to the spoils, which, in this case, means the temporary joint possession of the woman. In the second place, however, the individual is a member of the clan, and what he gains is therefore regarded as belonging also to the others. Thus the right of the closest companions may broaden into a right of the clan. Indeed, where strict monogamy does not prevent, phenomena similar to marriage by capture persist far beyond this period into a later civilization. Thus, in France and Scotland, down to the seventeenth century, the lord possessed the right of _jus primæ noctis_ in the case of all his newly married vassals. In place of the clan of an earlier period we here find the lord; to him has been transmitted the right of the clan. At the time when these phenomena were in their early beginnings, the temporary relation might very easily have become permanent. It is thus that group-marriage originates--an institution of an enduring character which not only survives the early marriage by capture but which is reinforced and probably first made permanent by its substitute, namely, marriage by purchase. In this instance again, Australian custom offers the clearest evidence. In the so-called 'Pirrauru marriage' of Australia, a man, M, possesses a chief wife, C^1, called 'Tippamalku.' [image missing, see htm--transcribers.] Another man, N, likewise has a chief wife, C^2. This wife, C^2, is, however, at the same time a secondary wife, S^1, or 'Pirrauru' of M. In like manner the chief wife, C^1, may, in turn, be a secondary wife, S^2, of N. This is the simplest form of group-marriage. Two men have two wives, of whom one is the chief wife of M and the secondary wife of N, and the other is the chief wife of N and the secondary wife of M. Into such a group yet a third man, O, may occasionally enter with a chief wife, C^3, whom he gives to M as a secondary wife, S^3, and eventually to N as a secondary wife, S^4, without himself participating further in the group. In this way there may well be innumerable different relations. But the marriage is a 'Pirrauru marriage' whenever a man possesses not only a chief wife but also one or more secondary wives who are at the same time the wives of other men. 'Pirrauru marriage' is a form of group-marriage, for it involves an exchange of women between the men of a group according to the reciprocal relation of chief and secondary wives. The very manner in which 'Pirrauru marriage' originates, however, indicates that in all probability its basis is _monogamy_, and not, as is supposed by many ethnologists and sociologists, 'promiscuity,' or the total absence of all marriage. In harmony with this interpretation is the fact that in numerous regions of Australia, especially in the northern districts, it is not group-marriage but monogamy that prevails. There is also, of course, a form of group-marriage that differs from 'Pirrauru