In spite of its plausibility, McLennan's theory did not seem too well founded even in the eyes of its author. At least he finds it remarkable himself "that the form of capture is now most distinctly marked and impressive just among those races which have male kinship."[4] And again: "It is a curious fact that nowhere now, that we are aware of, is infanticide a system where exogamy and the earliest form of kinship co-exists."[5] Both these facts directly disprove his method of explanation, and he can only meet them with new and still more complicated hypotheses. In spite of this, his theory found great approval and favor in England. Here McLennan was generally considered as the founder of the history of the family and as the first authority on this subject. His contrast of exogamous and endogamous "tribes" remained the recognized foundation of the customary views, however much single exceptions and modifications were admitted. This antithesis became the eye-flap that rendered impossible any free view of the field under investigation and, therefore, any decided progress. It is our duty to confront this overrating of McLennan, practised in England and copied elsewhere, with the fact that he has done more harm with his ill-conceived contrast of exogamous and endogamous tribes than he has done good by his investigations. Moreover, in the course of time more and more facts became known that did not fit into his neat frame. McLennan knew only three forms of marriage: polygamy, polyandry and monogamy. But once attention had been directed to this point, then more and more proofs were found that among undeveloped nations there were connubial forms in which a group of men possessed a group of women. Lubbock in his "Origin of Civilization" (1870) recognized this "communal marriage" as a historical fact. Immediately after him, in 1871, Morgan appeared with fresh and, in many respects, conclusive material. He had convinced himself that the peculiar system of kinship in vogue among the Iroquois was common to all the aborigines of the United States, and practised all over the continent, although it was in direct contradiction with all the degrees of relation arising from the connubial system in practice there. He prevailed on the federal government to collect information on the systems of kinship of other nations by the help of question blanks and tables drawn up by himself. The answers brought the following results: 1. The kinship system of the American Indians is also in vogue in Asia, and in a somewhat modified form among numerous tribes of Africa and Australia. 2. This system finds a complete explanation in a certain form of communal marriage now in process of decline in Hawaii and some Australian islands. 3. By the side of this marital form, there is in practice on the same islands a system of kinship only explicable by a still more primeval and now extinct form of communal marriage.