With the Malagasies, where the social organisation is much more complex and _quasi_ feudal, there is already a veritable civil marriage. The future pair, accompanied by their parents, go before the judge or the chief of the village, declare their intentions, pay the _Hasina_, or matrimonial tax, and the union is concluded. As is the case in many countries, Malagasian polygamy already tends towards monogamy. At Madagascar, as in China, rich men have one chief wife, who has a house to herself and other privileges; but by the side of the titular wife there are lesser wives.[360] I shall have to return to this hierarchical polygamy, which forms a sort of evolutionary connecting link between primitive polygamy, subjecting all the wives equally before their owner, and monogamic marriage. But for the present I must pursue my summary inquiry through the lands of primitive polygamy. In the whole of Polynesia polygamy was general and unlimited. There, again, the number of wives was strictly in proportion to rank and riches.[361] There were, however, examples of voluntary monogamy[362] among the chiefs, and a much larger number of monogamists, in spite of themselves, in the lower classes.[363] In several Polynesian islands polygamy was already evolving towards monogamy; thus, at Samoa,[364] at Tonga,[365] in New Zealand,[366] there existed a chief wife, exempted from hard work, and having pre-eminence over the other wives. Over all the great American continent polygamy is or has been in force. The Ancas or Araucanos of South America--nomads and robbers--buy very dear wives when they can, and make concubines of all the prisoners procured in their razzias, exactly after the manner of the ancient Arabs. The poor or the feeble among them, as elsewhere, are badly provided, and are frequently reduced to remain celibate,[367] or to have only one wife. For the same reasons, the young men among the Otomacs were often obliged to be contented with an old woman,[368] and the Charruas waited till their first wife grew old before procuring a younger one.[369] Herrero tells us also, that in Honduras forced monogamy was general enough, except, indeed, for the chiefs, who appropriated the women by the right of the strongest.[370] In South America, as in Africa, the women were very far from rebelling against polygamy; for there, also, all the hard work fell to them, and the burden of it was lightened in proportion to the number of labourers. In the tribes that were already agricultural, the Guaranis, for example, the men did nothing to the land but clear off the brushwood and timber; then came the women, who did all the sowing, harvesting, prepared the fermented drink for guests,[371] without mentioning other domestic cares. Such a kind of life is necessarily unfavourable to delicacy, and even amongst civilised people habitual overwork is hardly compatible with refined sentiments. In all countries exclusive love and jealousy