The facts just mentioned lead to the conclusion that the “capture” which forms the most prominent incident in the marriage customs under discussion, has a totally different significance from that which is connected with exogamy in the sense supposed by Mr. M’Lennan and Sir John Lubbock. In the latter case force is resorted to to prevent the possibility of opposition by the tribe to whom the victim of the violence belongs; but in the former, as the consent of the woman’s relatives had already been given, expressly or by implication, the force must be to overcome the possible opposition of the woman herself, whether this may arise from bashfulness or from an actual dislike to the suitor. We have here an important distinction, and it points to a state of society where women have acquired a right to exercise a choice in the matter of marriage. Before this right could be fully established the suitor would be allowed to obtain her compliance by force, if necessary, as with the Greenlanders, among whom, according to Crantz, the bride, if, after she has been captured by the old women who negotiated the marriage, she cannot be persuaded by kind and courteous treatment, is “compelled by force, nay, sometimes by blows, to change her state.” But even among the Greenlanders, if a girl had great repugnance to her suitor, she could escape marriage by betaking herself to the mountains. A still more efficacious plan is the cutting off of her hair, which frees her from all importunity, as it is accepted as a sure sign that she has determined never to marry. “Marriage by capture” has thus relation not to the tribe but to the individual immediately concerned, and it is based on her power to withhold her consent to the contract made between her suitor and her relatives. Among some uncultured peoples the opposition of the bride-elect is effectually overcome by force, but it is seldom that she is not allowed the opportunity of escaping a marriage which she dislikes. When once it has become usual for the bride to show a real or simulated opposition to the proposed marriage, as might easily be the case among peoples who, although uncultured, esteem chastity before marriage, it would in course of time be firmly established as a general custom. Thus, when a Greenland young woman is asked in marriage she professes great bashfulness, tears her ringlets, and runs away. When the show of opposition had become a matter of etiquette, it would, notwithstanding that the marriage had been previously arranged, be joined in by the friends of the bride, who, by a fiction, is being carried off against her will. Hence the customs of having a sham fight before the bridegroom is allowed to gain possession of his prize, and the placing of impediments in the way of his catching her in the chase, neither of which has any relation to a supposed primitive practice of forcible abduction from a hostile tribe.