Very interesting, however, in the case of the fishes is the fact observed by Sutherland that “as soon as the slightest trace of parental care is discovered the chance of survival is increased and the birth-rate is lowered.” As a general summary these words of Dr. Parsons will serve:--“Diminution of offspring is a threefold gain to a species. (1) It lessens the vital drain upon the parent. (2) It enables the size and capacity of the limited number of offspring to be increased. (3) In the case of the higher developments of parental care after birth, it concentrates the advantage of that care upon a few instead of scattering it, and thereby weakening its influence, upon many.” Now how are these facts connected with that relation between the parents which we call marriage, temporary or permanent, foreshadowed or perfected? _It may be submitted that the racial function or survival-value of marriage in all its forms, low or high, animal or human, consists in its services to the principle of motherhood, these services depending upon the help and strength which are afforded to motherhood by fatherhood._ =Animal marriage.=--Let us now look very briefly at the facts of animal marriage from this point of view. The phrase, animal marriage, may possibly offend the reader, but is there any reason to be offended at the suggestion that the principle of marriage actually has a warrant older even than mankind? It has lately been pointed out by a distinguished naturalist, Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, that animals, like men, have long been groping, so to say, for an ideal form of marriage. We now know, as will be shown, that, contrary to popular opinion, promiscuity does not prevail amongst the lowest races of men. Equally false is the popular notion that promiscuity prevails amongst most of the lower animals. Promiscuity, it is true, does occur, but so also does strict monogamy, “and promiscuous animals, such as rabbits and voles, while high in the scale of fecundity, are low in the scale of general development.” Says Mr. Seton: “It is commonly remarked that while the Mosaic law did not expressly forbid polygamy, it surrounded marriage with so many restrictions that by living up to the spirit of them the Hebrew ultimately was forced into pure monogamy. It is extremely interesting to note that the animals, in their blind groping for an ideal form of union, have gone through the same stages, and have arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Monogamy is their best solution of the marriage question, and is the rule among all the higher and most successful animals.”