Among the Bogos of Eastern Africa, persons related within the seventh degree may not intermarry, whether the relationship be on the paternal or maternal side.[1828] Some of the clans of the Somals, as we are informed by Sir R. F. Burton, refuse maidens of the same or even a consanguineous family.[1829] In Western Equatorial Africa and Uganda, marriages cannot take place within the clans, however remote the relationship may be.[1830] Among the Mpongwé, “every care is taken to avoid marriages of consanguinity.”[1831] With the Bateke, as Dr. Sims writes from Stanley Pool, marriages are prohibited between brothers and sisters of the same mother or father; between first cousins; between uncle and niece, or aunt and nephew. The Bakongo also, according to Mr. Ingham, hold all unions between near relatives, either on the father’s or mother’s side, in utter abomination. Mr. Cousins, to whom I am indebted for a valuable paper on the Cis-Natalian Kafirs, writes that, among them, marriages often take place within the tribe and village. But this is avoided, if possible; like their chiefs they generally endeavour to marry out of their own tribe. Among this people, however, there is some kind of class (clan?) division, which Mr. Cousins is not fully acquainted with, and members of the same class (clan?) do not seem to intermarry. At any rate, near relations, paternal and maternal, avoid marriage with each other. No penalty is attached to such a marriage, but custom is so strong on the point that the general rule is seldom broken.[1832] According to Mr. Shooter[1833] and Mr. Dugmore,[1834] a marriage is considered incestuous if the man and woman are of any known or remembered degree of relationship by common descent; and, if a man were to take a wife within the degrees prohibited by custom, he would be denounced as an “evildoer.”[1835] According to Mr. Brownlee, intercourse in such cases is punished, whether it be by marriage or without marriage.[1836] Again, with regard to the Zulus, Mr. Eyles states that there is no intermarriage between the inhabitants of the village, the members of which are, as a rule, related. All intermarrying with relations is prohibited by custom, and such a thing is neither heard of nor thought of. Even if the relationship is only traditional, the custom holds good.