As a rule, marriage life among these Andamese islanders is said to be very happy. The women are constant and faithful; the husbands also exercise marked fidelity. The spirit of equality and reciprocity prevails to an exceptional degree when compared with many other uncivilized peoples, and indeed with many civilized people. Even before the mother gives birth to the child, the little one receives a name with a qualitative, according to sex. This it bears for two or three years. It is then replaced by another qualitative which the boy bears till his initiation into the rites of manhood, and the girl till the appearance of signs of puberty. This name corresponds to some tree or flower. When the girl marries she drops her "flower name." Mothers, too, have great fondness for their children, nursing them as long as there is milk for them, and it is not uncommon for three children to feed at the same maternal breast. A peculiar custom prevails, however, by which most of the children are by the fifth or sixth year taken from their parents, and become parts of another household. This custom of adoption is a method by which friends express and cement their friendships for one another. As Quatrefages says: "Every married man received into a family regards as an expression of gratitude and proof of friendship, the privilege of adopting one of the children of the family." The parents rarely see children that have been adopted. They may pay them visits, but they never take them back permanently to their homes, and temporarily only by permission. The foster-father may, strangely enough, pass his adopted child on to some friend of his, as freely as he might one of his own. The modesty of the scantily clothed women is noteworthy. Man, who has written so minutely upon the Andamese, says that when a woman has occasion to remove one of her girdles in order to make it a present to a friend, she does so with a shyness that amounts almost to prudery; and she never changes her apron before a companion, but retires to some secret place. Even within the same family circle, the bearing of the sexes toward each other is modest and delicate. The man will observe the greatest care in his attitude toward the wife of a cousin or of a younger brother, only addressing her through a third person. The wife of an elder brother receives the respect accorded to a mother.