branched, thus giving rise to the "fingers," while the lower portion of the cob makes a fair-shaped "wrist." The engraving is made from a photograph recently sent from Missouri.

It would be impossible to mention the instances even of abnormal forms in seeds, or to go further and show how there may

be monstrous forms that can only be seen through the compound microscope.

The molds, mildews, rusts, smuts, and various blights that feed upon higher plants have their freaks that are sometimes puzzling to those who study these minute structures.

A large museum might be filled with the eccentricities of the vegetable world. Some of them would only teach the lesson of a lack of equilibrium among the laws which determine definite lines of growth. Others would serve to open the door to some hidden fact of vegetable morphology. Thus,

the interchange of stamens and pistils

in some abnormal blossom teaches the lesson of the common origin of the two essential organs, while the gradation of either or both to floral envelopes indicates that pistils are only petals of a special form for a special purpose. In short, the malformations as we speak of them are only forms in less than their usual disguise. The leaf is the unit of structure in the flower, and the flower is a metamorphosed branch, which may terminate in a seed-vessel, as the pear, or in rare instances in a leafy branch beyond the fruit, thereby corroborating the belief that the fruit is a part of a stem.

Some one has said that when under the influence of an intoxicant the victim throws off his disguise and lets his inner self

appear; so likewise the plant, when it for some reason not easily seen departs from the normal, lets the thoughtful student of plant nature get glimpses of truth not otherwise vouchsafed to him. Teratology is not chaos, neither are malformations meaningless. The unit of origin of parts is no better demonstrated than through some of the "inebriated" conditions as found from time to time in the kingdom of plants.

MARRIAGE AND KINSHIP AMONG THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES.

IN

BY COLONEL A. B. ELLIS.

the article on Polyandry which appeared in The Popular Science Monthly for October, 1891, we had occasion to refer to the custom of raising up seed to a deceased elder brother as indicating that the Israelites had formerly practiced that form of polyandry in which the associated husbands are brothers; and in the present article we propose to pursue the investigation there hinted at, and to inquire to what extent the Israelites conformed to what appear to have been the normal phases of evolution of marriage and kinship in early times. To clear the ground, it will be convenient to commence by briefly stating what those phases

were:

1. There was a primitive condition of which we can ascertain with certainty little or nothing; but, from the analogy of the lower animals, we infer that unions were not for life, and that couples paired for as long as it suited them, or until the child was weaned.

2. This condition was upset by the practice of female infanticide, which caused men to become much more numerous than

women.

3. The inevitable result of this disproportion was either that the men of a community held their women in common, or that several men attached themselves to each woman, forming unions of the type of the ruder polyandry.

4. At the same time men strove to add to the number of their women by seizing and carrying off the women of other communities. Marriage by capture commenced.

5. As a result of a community in women, or of polyandry, and also as a result of marriage by capture, the paternity of children would always be uncertain. Hence, fathers being unknown, there could be no kinship in the male line. Kinship and descent would. be traced solely through mothers, as we find is the case among nearly all the lower races at the present day.

We need go no further than this, though many other changes ensue; and we will now see what traces may be found in the books of the Old Testament, to indicate that the Israelites passed through these several phases.

First, as to marriage by capture. We read in Genesis, xxxi, 26, that when Jacob had secretly made off with his wives and flocks, Laban upon overtaking him asked, "What hast thou done, that thou hast stolen away unawares to me, and carried away my daughters as captives taken with the sword ?" From which it is evident that the practice of carrying off women by force was not unknown. In Numbers, xxxi, we read that the Israelites, having defeated Midian, saved thirty-two thousand virgins as booty. They had at first spared all the women, as spoil, which shows that it was quite usual to do so; but on this occasion Moses induced them to murder all those who were not virgins. In Deuteronomy, xx, 14, women are classed as spoil; and in Deuteronomy, xxi, 11, 14, are the regulations to be observed in taking to wife a woman captured in war. In the song of praise attributed to Deborah and Barak, when exulting over the defeat and death of Sisera, we find (Judges, v, 30): "Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey to every man a damsel or two?" These are all cases of capture de facto, and they show conclusively that the Israelites captured women and took them to wife. That it was also a common practice among the neighboring nations we infer from I Samuel, xxx, 5, where David's two wives are carried off by a raiding party of Amalekites.

But, besides hostile captives, the Israelites had also marriage with the form of capture-an important point, for it shows that marriage by capture had formerly been the normal mode of obtaining a wife, and that the custom of ages had caused a semblance of violence to be considered necessary, even in marriages made by arrangement. The Old Testament phrase is to "take" a wife, as for example Genesis, xxiv, 67: "And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife"; Genesis, xxxviii, 2: "And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah; and he took her"; Numbers, xii, 1: "For he (Moses) had taken an Ethiopian woman"; Judges, xiv, 7, 8: "And he went down and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson well, and after a time he returned to take her"; Tobit, vii, 12, 13: "Then take her from henceforth according to the manner"; and "Behold, take her after the law of Moses." This "taking" was a form of capture. Dr. Smith, in his Dictionary of the Bible, article "Marriage," remarks that "taking a wife" seems to be literally meant, and that the "taking" was the chief ceremony in the constitution of a marriage. In the case of Samson we read: "They brought thirty

companions to be with him "-that is to say, they brought thirty men to represent the party of the bridegroom in the form of capture, the bringing being necessary in Samson's case because he had none of his own people with him. One of these thirty acted as leader, or best man, and Samson's wife was afterward given to him (verse 20)-a proceeding quite in accordance with existing practices among some people who marry with the form of capture.

We find a clear case of marriage with the form of capture in connection with the civil war with the tribe of Benjamin. The remnant of Benjamin, six hundred in number, who survived the war, were all men. There were no women left, and as the other tribes had sworn that they would not give their daughters in marriage to the men of Benjamin, there was a prospect of that tribe becoming extinct. In this dilemma the tribes attacked Jabesh-gilead and captured four hundred women, who were handed over to Benjamin; but, as this left two hundred men still unprovided for, they contrived the following plan: A yearly festival was held at Shiloh, at which it was customary for the girls to come out and dance. So they instructed the men of Benjamin to lie hid in the vineyards, and when the girls appeared each man was to seize one and carry her off. So it was done, and in this way the tribes kept the letter of their oath and evaded the spirit. They did not give their daughters to Benjamin, but they connived at their being carried off with the form of capture (Judges, xxi).

The Israelites thus had both marriage by capture de facto and marriage with the form of capture, and in the former article we showed that they had once been polyandrous. Now we know that marriage by capture is in its origin due to a scarcity of women, though it is persevered in through custom after that scarcity has ceased to exist. Likewise, polyandry, the marriage of one woman to two or more men, only exists where women are less numerous than men. Consequently, since the Israelites had both these practices, there must have been a period in their history when women were fewer in number than men, and experience and observation all over the world have shown that such a disparity can only be brought about by female infanticide. We conclude, therefore, that the Israelites passed through our second, third, and fourth phases, and will now proceed to see if they also passed through the fifth.

From the fact of their having been polyandrous and having married by capture, we should infer that they must, at the period when these were the normal types of marriage, have had a system of kinship through females. If there were two or more husbands to one wife, the father of a given child could not be determined;

and if women were carried off by force from neighboring tribes and then married, there could be no certainty that the child borne by a captive woman was the offspring of one of the men in whose keeping she happened to be at the time of its birth. Fathers being thus uncertain, if not absolutely unknown, the paternal tie could not be taken into account. Blood-relationship would be traced through the mother, and this system would, through custom, prevail long after the conditions which gave rise to it had come to an end. Independently, then, of any evidence that may be forthcoming, we should conclude that the Israelites must at one time have had a system of kinship through mothers.

We now come to another point. There is no known case of a nation having marriage by capture and marriage with the form of capture without being exogamous; and since the Israelites had both these customs we infer that, unless they were altogether exceptional, they were also exogamous-that is, they prohibited marriage between those who were recognized as being related by blood. When we examine in detail all the marriages mentioned in which it is possible to trace the pedigrees both of husband and wife, we find that there is not one that would violate the principle of exogamy if descent were in the female line, while there are a great number which could not possibly occur if the Israelites were exogamous and traced descent in the male line. For instance, Nahor, Abraham's brother, married the daughter of his brother Haran (Genesis, xi, 29)-his niece, if descent were in the male line, but no relation if in the female. Abraham married his father's daughter (Genesis, xx, 12)-his half-sister if kinship was traced through males, but if through females, no relation. Marriages of this kind, it may be mentioned, are peculiar to the system of female descents and could not occur under any other system of kinship, if marriages between blood-relations were forbidden. We see in this case, too, what a point Abraham made of explaining that his wife was not the daughter of his mother, but only of his father. Isaac married Rebekah, granddaughter of his paternal uncle Nahor, who had himself married his brother's daughter (Genesis, xxiv, 15). Isaac and Rebekah would not be blood-relations if descent were in the female line. Esau married the daughter of Ishmael, his uncle on the father's side (Genesis, xxviii, 9; xxxvi, 3). Jacob married the daughters of his maternal uncle, Laban (Genesis, xxix, 10, 16). With descent in the female line Laban would be Jacob's blood-relation, but his daughters would not, since they would be of the kin of their mother. Laban and Jacob were both great-grandsons of Terah, and the following "tree" will show to what an extent, if kinship was reckoned in the male line, the descendants of Terah knowingly intermarried in the same blood.