Among the Vedas, a low caste of tropical India, boys marry at the age of from fifteen to sixteen years, certainly before the sexual organs have attained their full dimensions. The missionary Etern was struck with the agitation of the natives of Keradif (in Abyssinia) when they were ordered within fourteen days to marry all their boys more than fourteen years old to girls more than nine.[99] In Madagascar, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was the custom for boys to marry at an age of from ten to twelve years. The natives of German New Guinea marry their boys at the age of fourteen to fifteen. Even in England a law still exists permitting marriage to boys fourteen years old. The law is now a dead letter, but is evidence of the ancient practice. It is known that even at the present time the hymen is not always ruptured in sexual congress. Budin has recorded its existence in seventeen per cent. of primiparous women. Among seventy-five cases of women in their first confinements he found the hymen intact in thirteen cases. Since provision for children has fallen on fathers these have taken to deferring marriage to a later age than when children were left to the mother. That is the probable reason why there are now fewer married boys. Thus, formerly, the proportion of women who at the first childbirth still possessed unruptured hymens, was much greater, and it is not difficult to suppose that in still earlier times such a condition was normal. It is plain that there is here an instance of a very recently acquired disharmony. The homology between certain portions of the male and female reproductive apparatus is well known. The male homologue of the female hymen is a little fold that hinders the mingling of urine with the seminal fluid during emission, and that is known to anatomists as the _caput gallinaginis_ or _colliculus seminalis_. It is very much smaller than the hymen, so that we cannot regard the latter as a rudimentary homologue of a useful organ. However, the prepuce of the male is a clear instance of the presence in the male organs of useless parts. It is removed by circumcision among very many races, such as the Hebrews and Arabs, and other Mahomedans, and amongst Persians, negroes, Hindus, Tartars, and its absence seems to bring about no inconvenience. II _Evolution and significance of the menstrual flow in women.—Precocious marriage among primitive and uncivilised races.—Disharmony between age of puberty and age of nubility.—Age of marriage.—Examples of disharmony in the development of the reproductive function._ Notwithstanding their imperfections, the human organs of reproduction are able to fulfil their functions. A close scrutiny, however, shows that there are many sides on which they are disharmonious or badly adapted.