I have always been assured by the natives that the practice of concubitancy has greatly decreased since the introduction of Christianity and settled government. From the fact that thirty per cent, still marry their concubitants, it may be guessed how universal the custom must formerly have been. Now that free communication exists between the islands, and men have a far larger field of selection, they are said to choose rather not to marry their concubitants. Ratu Marika explained this by saying: "One has no zest for one's _ndavola_. She is too near. When you hear man and wife quarrelling, one says, 'What else? Are they not _vei-ndavolani_?'" The result is curious. They do not marry as they did formerly, but they commit adultery either before or after marriage. No sooner is a girl married than her concubitant comes and claims her, and so strong is custom that she seldom repulses him. It is said that about fifty per cent of the adultery cases brought before the criminal courts of the colony are offences between concubitants, but a number never come before the courts because the husband does not care to prosecute. There are few prosecutions for fornication between concubitants, because the complainants, the parents of the girl, do not feel themselves to be aggrieved. _Vei-tavaleni._--It is natural to expect some peculiarity in the relations between males, who would, if they were male and female, be concubitants. This relationship is called _vei-tavaleni_. To break through for once the rule of not using European terms, I may remark that _vei-tavaleni_ must of necessity mean both cousin and brother-in-law, and the reason is sufficiently obvious. Your _tavale_ is a brother of the woman to whom you were born married; _ergo_, your brother-in-law. The fact that you do not marry her makes no difference. She is your natural wife, and he is your natural brother-in-law. Even if your _tavale_ has no sister, he is still your brother-in-law, because, potentially, a sister might be born to him, who would be your wife. At this point I thought that I had found an inconsistency in the logic of the system. As the children of _vei-ndavolani_ (concubitants) are tabu, I supposed, naturally, that the children of _vei-tavaleni_ would be tabu also; but I found, to my surprise, that this was not so. Their children became _vei-ndavolani_ (concubitants). It seemed illogical, but I supposed that it was done as a compensation. The parents could not marry because they were of the same sex; therefore, to compensate the system for the loss of a concubitant marriage, their children were made to repair the accident by being concubitants.