[39] (_Hist. H. Marr._, chap. iii.) Dr. Westermarck's work was written on much more general lines. He did not aim at a purely morphological reconstruction of family life in any ethnographical province. I did not, therefore, refer to his researches in the methodological sketch; here, however, they must serve as a starting point. It is the most exhaustive treatise on the individual family; all the essential parts of the problem are sketched in a masterly manner in this fundamental work, and the outlines of more special investigation indicated. These remarks of Dr. Westermarck, corroborating what has been said in the introduction, direct our analysis to the relationship between parents and children as well as between the conjugal parties; resolving thus the marriage problem into the more general family problem. On the other hand, Dr. Westermarck, in these short passages quoted, as well as throughout his work, insists on the general and sociological aspect of family life. We shall try to apply his points of view systematically to our Australian material, keeping in mind the addition of the legal side of the question. As each relationship is intended to be separately treated, let us begin with that of man and wife, and especially with its "legal" aspect. The first point for discussion will be the modes of obtaining wives. In this the search will be for elements, that enforce _ipso facto_ the validity of marriage; there will probably be found in them the expression of some collective ideas, referring to the validity, moral or customary sanction, that marital union enjoys in the eyes of the native. It is also highly important for the whole question of marriage and family to ascertain whether the modes of obtaining wives are subject to any norm, compliance with which was enforced by an active intervention of society in some form. Such norms, according to the definition given above, would be legal ones, and they, necessarily, involve and presuppose a series of collective ideas, the knowledge of which would afford a deep insight into the primitive social mechanism. Betrothal or marriage ceremonies that would express a sanction of purely social or even _mystic_ or moral character are few, although not quite absent. Nevertheless the widespread practice of allotting young girls even in infancy, or before birth sometimes, shows _ipso facto_ how deeply rooted the idea of the individual right of a man to a woman is in the native mind. Also in the case when wives are obtained by elopement or capture, there are certain ordeals, formalities or duties, that give to such a marriage its social sanction.