In Australia it is the rule that a father alone can give away his daughter, and, according to Mr. Curr, the woman herself has no voice in the selection of her husband.[1324] But, with reference to the Narrinyeri, Mr. Taplin states that, “although the consent of a female is not considered a matter of the first importance, as, indeed, is the case in many uncivilized nations, yet it is always regarded as desirable.”[1325] Among the Kurnai, according to Mr. Howitt, she decidedly enjoys the freedom of choice. Should the parents refuse their consent, she goes away with her lover, and if they can remain away till the girl is with child she may, it is said, expect to be forgiven. Otherwise it may become necessary for them to elope two or three times before they are pardoned, the family at length becoming tired of objecting.[1326] Mr. Mathew asserts that, with varying details, marriage by mutual consent will be found among other tribes also, though it is not completed except by means of a run-away match.[1327] Elopement undertaken with the consent of the woman is, indeed, and has been, a recognized institution among at least some of the aboriginal tribes in Australia. Among the Kurnai it is the rule.[1328] The Maoris have a proverb, “As a kahawai (a fish which is very particular in selecting the hook that most resembles its food) selects the hook which pleases it best out of a great number, so also a woman chooses one man out of many.”[1329] Mariner supposed that, in Tonga, perhaps two-thirds of the girls had married with their own free consent.[1330] Concerning the natives of Arorae, Mr. Turner says, “In choosing a husband the lady sat in the lower room of the house, and over her head were let down through the chinks of the floor of the upper room two or three cocoa-nut leaflets, the ends of which were held by her lovers. She pulled at one, and asked whose it was. If the reply was not in the voice of the young man she wished to have, she left it and pulled at another leaf, and another, until she found him, and then pulled it right down. The happy man whose leaf she pulled down sat still, while the others slunk away.”[1331] In the Society Islands, the women of the middle and lower ranks had the power to choose husbands according to their own wishes; and that the women of the highest classes sometimes asserted the same right appears from the addresses a chief of Eimeo had to pay to the object of his attachment before she could be induced to accept his offer.[1332] In Radack, “marriages depend on a free convention,” as seems to be generally the case in Micronesia.[1333] In the New Britain Group, according to Mr. Romilly, after the man has worked for years to pay for his wife, and is finally in a position to take her to his house, she may refuse to go, and he cannot claim back from the parents the large sums he has paid them in yams, cocoa-nuts, and sugar-canes.[1334] With reference to the New Caledonian girl, M.