It is evident that hence complications might arise perplexing to the savage mind. For instance, we may expect to find cases where the niece is an adult, whilst the aunt is still an infant, and yet marriage between the former and the son of the latter is obligatory, as they are cousins of the same generation. Here, probably, we have a clue to one of the most bizarre facts in anthropology, where the universal rule as to sexual connection between generations seems to be wantonly disobeyed, although in reality the reverse may be seen to be the case on examination. It is recorded of the Keddies of Southern India that a very singular custom exists among them, a young woman of sixteen or twenty years of age may be married to a boy of five or six years. She, however, lives with some other adult male (perhaps a maternal uncle or cousin), but is also allowed to form a connection with the father’s relatives, occasionally it may be the boy’s father himself, i.e. the woman’s father-in-law! Should there be children from these liaisons, they are fathered on the boy husband. When the boy grows, the wife is either old or past child-bearing, when he in turn takes some other boy’s wife in a manner precisely similar to that in his own case and procreates children for the boy husband. By the classificatory system, as each in fact is a member of the same generation, they are born husbands and wives. The enforced virginity of the wife, implied under such conditions, entailed a celibacy incompatible with all lower ideas. It is easy to imagine the compromise between his conscience and his desires which a savage would make in such a case when favoured (or forced) by circumstances of environment, for it is unknown elsewhere. The infant nephew goes through the ceremony of marriage, which, by a fiction, being thus legally consummated, the wife is left free to follow her desires. These, however, are by no means allowed to run riot. They are regulated in a fashion of which, although the peculiarity is noted by the authors of the extract, the full significance can only be appreciated in connection with our hypothesis. She formed indeed connections outside of her husband, but solely with those of the legally eligible totem. As I believe the Keddies have male descent, these would be sons of the father’s sister, or sons of the mother’s brother, or again with the latter himself, who was her father-in-law, whereas union with the sons of the father’s brothers, or of the mother’s sisters, as being of the same totem, would not take place--and this we find to be the actual fact, as evidence proves.