What is still more general than the clan, is the institution of the maternal family, or uterine filiation; but this familial type is not invariably deduced from a previous familial clan. Among many animal species the maternal family exists without there ever having been either clan or _gens_. As a matter of fact, in humanity as well as in animality, the uterine family establishes itself spontaneously, whenever the male abandons the female and her progeny. This familial type will therefore necessarily appear in every horde where there is no durable pairing of males and females, of men and women. In every ethnic group living in promiscuity, for example, uterine filiation shows itself, and it will be the same under a polyandric _régime_, unless fictitious paternity is established. In short, for the adoption of the paternal family, it is imperative that the wives should be appropriated by a particular man, though it is of no importance whether the marriage be monogamic or polygamic. But this possession of one or more women by one man to the exclusion of all others, presupposes already a complex social condition, which has necessarily been preceded by a period of gross savagery, when only uterine filiation was possible. Now, it is a rule that ancient customs endure for a long time, and survive the social condition which had given birth to them. II. _The Family in Africa._ The uterine family is far from being rare in negro Africa, but this does not in any way hinder the man from exercising a discretionary power over his wife or wives, and still more over his children. We have previously seen how lamentable the fate of woman is among the negro Africans, and how excessive are “the rights of the father of the family,” since he can traffic in his children without rebuke. This virile despotism may easily coexist with the adoption of uterine filiation. In one Kaffir tribe, the men used their own children to bait their traps for catching lions,[976] and yet maternal filiation prevails in Kaffraria; only it does not govern inheritance. This mode of filiation is adopted by other races as well as Kaffirs. “In Guinea,” says Bosman,[977] “if it pleases the daughter of a king to marry a slave, her children are free.” Among the Fantees, the chief slave has the rights of succession, to the exclusion of the son; but the latter is only deprived of paternal succession; the property of his mother, as distinct from that of his father, comes to him.[978] At Dahomey there seems to be, in the royal family, a symbolic survival of the maternal family. At the death of the king, his sister exercises a regency of several days, and her duty is to occupy the throne in reality, and to remain seated on it as long as a successor has not been appointed.[979] But this does not in any way hinder the populations of Dahomey from adopting as a general custom, not only masculine succession, but even the right of primogeniture.[980] Barbarous as Dahomey may be, it is