According to Mr. E. J. Wood, among the Kaffirs, although the men inherit the property, their influences being in the ascendency, every woman has someone who acts as her father whether her own father be living or not. Kaffir law provides for the protection of all women, and so long as a male relation lives a girl has a protector. It goes even farther than this, and protects women who have been bereft of all their male relations. For such as these provision is made for their adoption into other groups, in which case, although they are received as dependents, they are protected as daughters.[101] [101] _Uncivilized Races of the World_, vol. i., p. 78. This practice of adoption is observed among various peoples. Among certain tribes in which descent is traced through women, a woman offers her breast to the person she is adopting, this being the strongest symbol of the unity of blood. Thus may be noted the fact that the fundamental idea, or principle, of tribal life is maternity, or the maternal instinct—that the uniting force which binds a child to its mother is the one which is supposed to unite the various members of a primitive group. So strongly has the maternal instinct as a binding principle taken root, that among certain peoples even where the manner of reckoning descent and the rights of succession have been changed from the female to the male line, whenever an individual wishes to be adopted into a gens he takes the hand of the leader of the group and sucking one of his fingers, declares himself to be his child by adoption; henceforth the new father is bound to assist him as far as he can.[102] Adoption “by the imitation of nature” was practised by the Romans down to the time of Augustus. [102] Parkyns, _Life in Abyssinia_, vol. i., p. 174. It has been observed that under the matriarchal system the mother was the only recognized parent, hence, when the father began to assume the rights and prerogatives which had hitherto belonged only to her, in order to make valid his claim, it was thought proper for him to go through various of the preliminaries attendant on childbirth. Of all the forms practised among lower races there is none, perhaps, which is more singular than is that of putting the father instead of the mother to bed in the event of the birth of a child. Concerning this custom, Mr. Tylor quotes from Klemm the following: Among the Arawaks of Surinam, for some time after the birth of his child the father must fell no tree, fire no gun, hunt no large game; he may stay near home, shoot little birds with a bow and arrow, and angle for little fish; but his time hanging heavy on his hands, the most comfortable thing he can do is to lounge in his hammock.[103] [103] _Early History of Mankind_, p. 296. Mr. Tylor quotes also from the Jesuit missionary, Dobrizhoffer, who gives the following account of the Abipones: