conditions, a legal and recognized form of contracting marriage. In the cases when, following infant betrothal and other circumstances, the husband was much older than his wife, the motive of sexual love was probably not reciprocal, but it would operate as a cause for more tender feelings on the part of the males. In the second place, it must be remembered that there are no reasons why the blacks should be completely alien to the feelings of attachment. Husband and wife lived more or less completely separated from the community, forming a more or less isolated unit (see below, on the mode of living). They had many interests in common, and, this being the strongest bond, they had common children to whom they were usually much attached. [213] For examples of conjugal affection see also an article written by a "bushman" and one of the members of Leichhard's Expedition. _Science of Man_, 1904, p. 47. To sum up this chapter, it may be said that the husband had a well-nigh complete authority over his wife; that he treated her in harmony with the low standard of culture, harshly, but not excessively harshly; that apparently the more tender feelings of love, affection and attachment were not entirely absent from the aboriginal household. But it must be added that, on these two last points, the information is contradictory and insufficient. MOURNING AND BURIAL CEREMONIES Among the duties and obligations which determine the relationship of husband and wife, there are some which may be mentioned in this place. I mean the customs and rites connected with mourning. Mourning expresses a whole complex of feelings and ideas, of which two sets are important here, inasmuch as they throw light upon the relationship of the mourner and the mourned. Firstly, mourning always expresses sorrow and grief (real or feigned) for the deceased; secondly, the various mourning ceremonies imply the idea that there was a strong tie between the two persons involved, a tie which persists after death and which must be broken by the magical virtue of rites.[214] Both these interpretations of mourning (sorrow for the deceased and the necessity of breaking the bond) involve the idea that the relationship between husband and wife was acknowledged by society as an individual and strong personal tie. As the modes of obtaining wives have shown us that to bring about a marriage it was necessary to get the sanction of society; so the long mourning of the widow and the different formalities she has to perform, before she becomes the property of the dead man's heir or is allowed to remarry, show that marriage was not dissolved at once, even by the death of the man. It shows, therefore, that the tie between husband and wife was not a loose one, and not merely established by the fact of possession or cohabitation; and that the appropriation was based not only on legal ideas, but deeply rooted in magico-religious feelings and representations.