No sooner do you hear that the wife has borne a child, than you will see the Abipone husband lying in bed, huddled up with mats and skins, lest some ruder breath of air should touch him, fasting, kept in private, and for a number of days abstaining religiously from certain viands; you would swear it was he who had had the child. The custom of putting the father to bed when a child is born is called _la couvade_, and traces of it are yet to be found in France. It is also practised among the Basques, and according to C. Staniland Wake, was anciently observed in Corsica, among the Iberians of Spain, and in the country south of the Black Sea. It is still practised in Southern India, in Yunnan, in Borneo, in Kamchatka, and in Greenland. It is said also to be in use among the various tribes in South America.[104] The persistency of this practice shows the importance formerly attached to the maternal functions, and, as has been suggested, was doubtless inaugurated at a time when descent was being changed from the female to the male line. [104] _Marriage and Kinship_, p. 262. It was perhaps in the latter part of the Middle Status of barbarism that descent and the rights of succession began to be traced through males. When, through causes which will be noticed later in this work, property began to accumulate in the hands of men, children became the recognized heirs of their fathers and the foundation for the present form of the family was laid. However, long after descent began to be reckoned through males, absolute paternity was not necessary to fatherhood. During the earlier ages of male supremacy, fatherhood, like brotherhood, was a loose term and signified simply the head of a house, or the “lord” or owner of the mother. It mattered little whether a man had previously lent his wife to a friend, or whether he had shared her favours with several brothers, all the children “born on his bed” belonged to him and were of his family. Later in these pages will be observed the fact that the change in reckoning descent, which occurred at a comparatively late period in the history of the human race, is directly connected with the means of subsistence. So long as land was held in common by the members of the gens, and so long as women were able to manage the means of support, their independence was secure, and they were able to exercise absolute control over their own persons, their homes, and their offspring. Under these conditions men were obliged to please the women if they would win their favours.