This custom they have to themselves, and herein agree with no other men, in that they name themselves by the mother's side and not by the father's. And if one ask another who he is, he will recount his maternal descent, and reckon up his mother's maternal ancestors." Now, so far from this mode of deducing descent being peculiar to the Lycians, it was in vogue among the Locrians (Polybius, 12, v., and Excerpta Hist. Græc. Frag., Rome, 1827, p. 384). In the bilingual Etruscan inscriptions, according to M. Girand Teulon (Origine de la Famille, p. 21), to whom we owe many of these citations, "the Etruscan text contains only the name of the mother of the dead, while the Latin text gives that of the father." Certain Egyptian mortuary inscriptions give the name of the mother, while the accompanying Greek text gives that of the father. A stele found in the ruins of the temple at Napata by Mariette Bey (Revue Archéologique, May, 1873) shows us a monarch justifying his claim to the throne by enumerating the women of his maternal ancestry. Future historians will no doubt explain the apparent coexistence of two systems of kindred in Egypt. Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that Herodotus (ii. 35) declares that daughters were compelled by law to maintain their parents, while sons were free to do as they pleased. This report has been curiously confirmed by the legal documents of certain private Egyptian families, lately deciphered by M. Revillout. We see the woman mistress of the household, and owner of the property.

Many other ancient examples are published by the Baron d'Eckstein (Revue Archéologique, 1858), but M. d'Eckstein's speculations about race need not be accepted. Millar (op. cit., p. 48) quotes some survivals of the custom of tracing pedigree and deriving condition through women: "If any one be born of a Campanian father, and a mother Puteolan, he is a Campanian citizen, unless, by some particular custom (privilegio aliquo), his maternal descent is to be reckoned." Among places where this local custom ruled, Delphi is mentioned. The great collections of the facts known about the ancient position of women as heads of the family is Bachofen's Das Mutterrecht, in which somewhat crude speculations about religion are introduced. The most classical example of a tradition of gynaecocracy is that often-quoted tale of Varro's preserved by St. Augustine (De Civitate Dei, lib. xiii. c. 9). In the time of Cecrops, the serpent-king, a dispute arose between Pallas and Poseidon, which was settled by the votes of the Athenians. In these days women possessed the franchise, and a woman's vote turned the scale in favor of Pallas. To appease Poseidon, the Athenian men resolved that women should no more be admitted to the assemblies, nor should children take their names from the mother's family. In this tradition survives a memory of the Red Indian and Australian practice, which makes the child belong to the mother's clan, and also a memory of the political rights, so to speak, which women enjoyed among the ancient Britons, among the Iroquois of Lafitau's time, and which take the shape of a considerable share in the despotism of African races. It may be said that if women have ever enjoyed these privileges it is odd that among the least cultivated peoples, such as the Australians, they are treated as slaves. The reply is-if the Australians were a people of barbaric wealth, like many African nations, and if the certainty of succession to the "royal stool" and the royal treasures were a matter of the utmost moment to the state, it is not improbable that the ancient custom of female kinship would have given, among them too, dignity, importance, and power to women. Thus we know from several sources that

From the nobility of the mother

Should always be the right to the sovereignty among the Celts in Scotland (M'Lennan, Primitive Marriage, 1865, p. 86, quoting Nennius; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Rolls series, p. 1). Even in the Mahabharata there is a vestige of this system. Vasouki, the Naga (serpent) king, wished to have an heir. Instead of marrying, he found a partner for his sister Djaratkarou. The sister's son succeeded. Compare Bowditch's Ashantee (p. 185), "Their extraordinary rule of succession excludes all children but those of a sister, and is founded on the argument that, if the wives of the brothers are faithless, the blood of the family is entirely lost in the offspring, but, should the daughters deceive their husbands, it is still preserved.” In leaving this part of the subject we may ask, from what considerations, except those indicated by Bowditch, could

the rule of inheritance by the mother's side have been derived ? 4. It has been shown that the actual practices of many barbarous races make the existence of the patriarchal, and still more of the monogamous, family impossible, and that the traditions of the races called Aryan, with many fragments of their customs, testify to a similar state of things in the past experiences of nations now organized on the basis of the family. We must now ask-(1) Of what nature are the wider tribal associations of savages? (2) How did they come into existence? (3) Are there any vestiges of similar and similarly formed associations among peoples which now possess strict marriage and kinship through males? We find that the Australian black fellows and the red men of North America are grouped in local tribes, which generally are named from the lands they occupy. Thus, the Onondagas are people of the hills, the Mohawks people of the flint, the Senecas people of the great hills, the Oneidas people of the granite, and so forth (Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 1851). In Australia the tribes take the names of districts, as Ballarat, Wandyalloch, and Moreton Bay. Within these local tribes there are smaller associations, variously called "clans," "families," "septs," "tribes," by travellers. They are, as a rule, governed on this principle in Australia :- "All the children take after the clan of their mother, and no man can marry a woman of the same clan, although the parties be born of parents in no way related, according to our ideas" (G. S. Lang, Aboriginals of Australia, Melbourne, 1865, p. 10; Gray's Journals, etc., ii. 227). These smaller associations which may not intermarry are named after some animal, vegetable, or other natural object. A member of the Kangaroo associations may not slay or eat the kangaroo, which he holds in honor, and a Paddymelon must abstain from paddymelon. The obvious result of this scheme of prohibited marriage is to make every local tribe contain much the same assortment of smaller communities. Looking at North America, we find the local tribe of Senecas to be composed of sets of persons called by the name of Wolf, Bear, Turtle, Beaver, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk, and many of the same names prevail among Cayugas, Óneidas, Mohawks, and the rest. Just as in Australia, no man may marry a woman of the same name, though she may have been born hundreds of miles away, and may be no sort of relation in our sense of the word. As in Australia, the animal or plant from which each association takes its name is sacred; in America it is called the totem. The oldest Iroquois totems seem, from many legendary and political proofs, to have been Wolf, Bear, and Turtle (Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877, p. 70; see, also, M'Lennan, Fortnightly Review, 1869–1870). Turning to Africa (Bowditch's Mission to Ashantee, p. 181), we read of similar institutions. Livingstone reports similar facts among the Bechwanas, Falkner among the Patagonians, Brooke among the Sea Dyaks, and Garcilasso de la Vega among the lower races of Peru.

The essential features of these associations and groups of kindred are, for our present purpose (1) Their indubitable growth out of female kinship, and the rule which prohibits marriage between persons who are of the same name, and .own descent from the same plant, animal, or thing; (2) their existence as stocks of different blood in the same local tribe; and (3) their acknowledgment of kinship with, and of the duty to support in war, or to revenge, other members of the same name. (On this point, see Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 78. Compare also Ancient Society, p. 175, as to the Louchoux or Kutchin of the Tukon River: "A man does not marry into his own class; the children belong to the grade of the mother; members of the same grade in the different tribes do not war with each other.") For convenience of nomenclature, we shall call all such associations totem-kin. The word totem points to the peculiarity of supposed descent from some natural object which gives the name, and “kin” is more convenient than "group" or "clan," because the same totem and the same name cover many scattered groups.

5. The question now rises, Do we meet similar associations among civilized peoples who now possess the family? First, we find Mr. Hart of Canton, saying (Ancient Society, pp. 364, 365): "In some parts of the country large villages are to be met with, in each of which there exists but one family name; thus in one district will be found, say, three villages, each containing two or three thousand people,

the one of the Horse, the second of the Sheep, and the third of the Ox family name. Just as among the North American Indians husband and wife are always of different families, that is, of different surnames. Custom and law alike prohibit marriage on the part of people having the same family surname. The children are of the father's family,—that is, they take his surname." (Compare Narrative of Two Mahometan Travellers, Pinkerton, vol. vii.) The Arabian travellers had the same law at home, prohibiting marriage between people of the same family name. Looking at India we find in the Institutes of Menu (iii. 5) that a man of the twice-born classes may not marry 'a woman descended from his paternal or maternal ancestors within the sixth degree, nor [in words believed to be a comment on the original] one who is known by her family name to be of the same primitive stock with his father." No one, that is to say, may marry within the ghotra, just as no Red Indian may marry within the limits fixed by the totem. If the ghotra was counted, or if the Chinese family name ran, on the female side, Chinese and Brahmans would be exactly in the position of Australian blacks, as far as prohibited degrees are concerned. Mr. Cunningham (Digest of Hindu Law, Madras, 1877) says that the old rule about the ghotra is falling into disuse, and that local custom in many places permits it to be disobeyed. Now, just as observers in India note this change of practice, so observers among the Red Indians and Australians note another change of practice. Kindred among these peoples is very gradually beginning to be reckoned by the male line; children are being counted among some tribes in the clan of the father (Morgan, p. 86).

Leaving India, and turning to Greece and Rome, we find the local tribe and, subordinate to the tribe, two forms of associations called the yévog and gens, which are prominent in early history and gradually die out. Thus, though in the Twelve Tables, as we have seen, the members of the gens succeed to the property of an intestate, yet in the 2d century Gaius declares (Inst. iii. 17) that all Gentile law had fallen into desuetude. The gens, then, was, as its very name implies, a form of kindred, but old and hastening to decay. The members of a gens, according to Cicero, had a common name, were born of free parents, and were those who capite non sunt deminuti. Festus adds that members of a gens are ex eodem genere orti.

It must be noticed that, though the members of a gens were of no recognizable kin to each other in one sense, yet they showed a certain solidarité-putting on mourning when one of the kin was in disgrace (Livy, vi. 20), sharing common religious rights peculiar to themselves, and at one time having a right to inherit property. All these things point to consciousness of distant blood-relationship. Still one feature of the ghotra seems absent. It is hardly proved that there was a time when Romans might not marry within the gens. Indications of the past existence of the rule are found in the fact that Roman genealogies do not, as it is said, show us examples of marriages between persons of the same gens. More to the point is Plutarch's statement (Περὶ αἰτίων Ρωμαϊκών), “In times past it was unlawful for Romans to mary women of their own kin (συγγενίδας); nay, they did not wed ladies in any degree connected with them by blood, just as now they do not take sisters or aunts, and it was long before they ventured to take cousins to wife." It seems then that, just as in the case of the contemporary ghotra of the Hindus, an ancient and wide prohibition to marry in the gens was thrown off by the Romans. Here it must be noted that the ghotra of the Hindu law of inheritance is not identical with the ghotra in which marriage is prohibited by custom. It is rather a body composed of all the cognates within certain large limitations.

In the example of the Greek yέvos we again find the common name a patronymic, generally thought to be derived from a hero. We find that all who bore the name shared certain religious rights, and before Solon's date were co-heirs to property, and took up the blood feud if one of the yévog were slain. Yet the yevra are often defined as not akin in blood, so entirely did the old sense of relationship dwindle, in Greece as in Rome. The lexicographers supposed that the yen were constituted by legis lative enactment, νόμῳ τὴν ἔχοντες κοινωνίαν. (See Meier, De Gentibus Atticis; Philippi, Der Areopag und die Epheten, Berlin, 1874, p. 68; Schoemann, Griechische Alterthümer,

Berlin, 1861, vol. i. p. 329, with Schoemann's theory of the growth of the yέvos; F. Haase, Die Athenische Stammverfassung; also Grote's History of Greece, iii. 53.) Now, hard as it is to ascertain the exact nature of the yέvos, and of its relation to the tribe, it seems, on the whole, more analogous to the totem-kin than to the caste or joint family of the modern Hindus. (See Sir Henry Maine, South Slavonians and Rajpoots," Nineteenth Century, December, 1877.) A common name, co-heirship, the duty of avenging a member, all point to the idea of kinship. As to exogamy, a Greek could certainly marry in his own yévoç, for the common name went by the father's side, and a Greek might marry his father's though not his mother's daughter. It has been argued that the prohibition to marry a uterine sister, though kinship in historic Greece went by the male line, indicates a past when the maternal tie was more strict,-when, in fact, a man who married his uterine sister married within the yέvoç, and a man who took his half-sister by the father's side married outside the yevoc. Here it may be observed that Aristotle (Pol., 1, 2, 5, 6) gives as very ancient synonyms of γεννήται the terms ομογάλακτες (nourished on the same milk), duoσivot (eating from the same vessel), ouоkávoι (warmed by the same fire). These terms speak of a time when motherhood or fosterage, when community of shelter, not blood kinship, were the bonds that kept members of the same kin together. The words may be compared with Gaelic teadhloch and coediche, 'Gaelic names for family, signifying, the first, having a common residence, the second those who eat together" (M'Lennan, Prim. Mar., p. 154).

It has been usual, almost universal, to explain the Greek yέvoc and Roman gens by simply saying, like Mr. Freeman (Comparative Politics, Macmillan, 1873, p. 111), “The family grew into the clan, the clan grew into the tribe.” Mr. Freeman says we can trace this process best “among men of our own blood." But when we examine the early associations of the English (Kemble's Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 458), we find, just as in America, just as in Australia, groups of kindred of the same name,―take Billing, by way of example,-scattered from north to south through all the local tribes. We have seen how this happens in America and Australia, we have seen that there the family, in Mr. Freeman's sense, does not grow into the clan. Did it do so in Attica and Italy, and, if so, how did a tribe, which was ex hypothesi but a swollen clan, contain so many stocks which claimed distinct origin and distinct mythical ancestors? How did these stocks come to be scattered through local tribes, not grouped in one? The growth of savage tribes is not a development of the family; tribes singularly like those of savages are found in early civilizations. Had the two kinds of kindred different origins?

There remains a point to notice. The thoroughly savage totem-kindreds revere the animal, plant, or other object from which they take their name and claim descent, and they use it as a badge. For Greek and Roman survivals of this usage see Plutarch, Theseus; M'Lennan, "The worship of plants and animals," in the Fortnightly Review, 1869, 1870; and the Antiquities of Heraldry, by W. S. Ellis, 1869. If the ordinary theory, that the tribe and clan are overgrown families, be rejected, the converse theory may be stated thus:-The totem-kindreds of savages grow up through exogamy and female kin. The change to male kinship (a change which is demonstrably taking place in America and Australia) produced something like the Chinese circle of relationship. The substitution of the name of a fictitious ancestor for that of the sacred plant, animal, or natural object produced a circle of affinity like the Hindu ghotra of customary religion. The decay of the prohibition to marry within the kin united by the family name, like the growing laxity of rule in the ghotra, produced something like the Greek yevos and the Roman gens. Nothing remained but joint religious rites, a common place of burial, a common name, a vague feeling of connection, traditions of the prohibition to marry within the gens, the duty of taking up the blood-feud, and vestiges of the jointheirship. In process of time the intenser affections of the family caused the old gentile ties to disappear, and gentile law became an empty memory.

1 We have examples in Zulu-land of the declining belief in animal

ancestry (Callaway's Religion of the Amazulu), and in Greek history we have frequent instances of the fictitious adoption of eponymous heroic ancestors.

would secure one or more wives to themselves, and their example imitated would produce monandry. The old state of things would leave its trace in the levirate, the duty of "raising up seed to a brother." Even before these changes the custom of marrying out of the group would have introduced so many strangers of various names and totems, that the members of a local tribe could intermarry with one another and yet not violate the law of exogamy. Such a local tribe, flushed with success in war, might refuse to marry beyond its limits, and become, so to say, a caste divided into ghotras. Let this caste feign itself to be descended from a common ancestor (a process of which Sir John Lubbock gives many examples), and you have a caste believed to be of common blood, yet refusing to marry outside the blood, that is, an endogamous tribe. Within this tribe (as it were by a reaction from the old kinship through females) grows kinship through males only, the agnatic system of Rome. The wife and children are the husband's property; agnates only can be a man's heirs, and, failing these, gentiles,-i. e., members of the kin still denoted by the common name.

Many criticisms have been made, especially by Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Herbert Spencer (Origin of Civilization, third edition; Principles of Sociology, vol. i.), on the scheme here too briefly sketched. Sir John Lubbock holds that exogamy springs from marriage by capture (by which alone a member of a group could get a wife to himself), rather than marriage by capture from exogamy. Mr. Spencer advocates the action of various "conspiring causes,' "the stealing of a wife might become the required proof of fitness to have one" (op. cit., pp. 652, 653). The origin of exogamy lies so far behind us in the past that it may remain for ever obscure. It is probable that every variety of union of the sexes has existed, while it seems possible that a few have been passed through, as necessary stages, by all advancing races. In this notice we have said little of the custom by which a man is a member of several clubs of men, each with one wife in common.

No hard and fast theory is likely to be accepted as more than provisional in the present state of knowledge, when science has only for a few years been busily occupied in this investigation. (A. L.) FAMINES. War, pestilence, and famine are regarded by many as the natural enemies of the human race; but in truth these are all more or less associated with the circumstances of civilization. In the highest state of civilized society there ought to be no war; there need be no pestilence; and famine alone would stand as being beyond the range of human prevention-subject to some conditions to be afterwards spoken of. The advancement in the social scale to a state of dependence upon cereal crops, while the facilities of intercommunication between different countries, or even parts of the same country, remained imperfect, led almost necessarily to the periodical recurrence of scarcity. Cereal crops are especially dependent upon conditions of climate for their regular production; and here at least are circumstances beyond human control.

1

In a matter of such practical importance as the failure of the regular supply of the food of the people, it is not desirable to rely upon merely theoretical surmises; nor is it necessary to do so. A table has recently been prepared of over 350 famines which have occurred in the history of the world, beginning with those spoken of in the Scriptures as having been in Palestine and in the neighboring nations in the time of Abraham (Gen. xii. 10), and again in the time of Isaac (Gen. xxvi. 1); passing on to the seven years' famine in Egypt down through those which afflicted ancient Rome; enumerating in their order those which have visited the three divisions of the United Kingdom (by far the most numerous in the table-the records being more available), as also those devastating Europe in the Middle Ages; reviewing in special detail the 34 famines which have visited India, including, as the first recorded of this group, that of 1769-70 (above 20 have been on a large scale); and concluding with that terrible calamity which is now ravag ing the populations in North China. It is not pretended that this table is entirely exhaustive. It is known that many famines have occurred in the Chinese empire of which no details have been found available; and it is supposed that many have desolated Persia and other portions of Asia of which exact particulars are not available. But 1 See Statistical Journal, vol. xli., paper by Mr. Cornelius Walford, F.I.A., F.S.S., etc., "On the Famines of the World, past and present."

as this is believed to be the only existing table of the kind, and as great pains have been taken to make it complete, it may for our present purpose be regarded at least as representative. We proceed, then, to an analysis of it, in view of ascertaining what have been the causes of famines,—a point of the first importance when we come to a consideration of the problem which will naturally force itself into prominence-can anything be done to avert these national calamities? The analysis discloses the following causes, or we may perhaps more accurately say attributed causes-for in this matter we have to follow the authority of the original chronicle, or of such records as have reached us:-1, rain; 2, frost; 3, drought; 4, other meteorological phenomena; 5, insects and vermin; 6, war; 7, defective agriculture; 8, defective transport; 9, legislative interference; 10, currency restrictions; 11, speculation; 12, misapplication of grain. These causes are named, as far as may be, in the order of their importance. It is immediately noticeable that they form themselves into the two distinct groups of natural and artificial causes.

We proceed to consider the first group-natural causes of famines.

1. Rain. By excess of rain floods are produced, the soil becomes saturated, and decomposition of the seed is occasioned. In hilly countries the seed is not unfrequently washed entirely out of the ground, and so is destroyed. This cause of famine applies in a marked manner to tropical countries, where the rains are so much of the nature of torrents that the evil presents itself in a magnified degree. Improved cultivation of the land, embracing good drainage, is providing the most effective remedy. Other forms of damage to grain crops result from rain, as where it occurs in undue quantities during the harvest season, and the crops are destroyed before they can be safely stored. This has constantly happened in the northern portions of our own kingdom, and in parts of continental Europe. Inundations from the sea, from rivers, from inland lakes, fall within this category, and great mischief has resulted from these in many parts of the world. White, in his Natural History of Selborne, gives scientific reasons why much-flooded lands remain infertilethe beneficial action of the earth-worms is thereby retarded.

2. Frost. In temperate regions frost is a deadly enemy to vegetation in several forms. In the case of grain cultivation it may, by setting in early, prevent the efficient manipulation of the soil and the sowing of the autumn seed. Or by being protracted beyond the early months of the year, it will prevent spring sowing, and even seriously injure the young crops. Combined with rain it will frequently destroy the vitality of the seed while yet in the ground. In the northern part of our island it not unfrequently destroys the grain before it is fully harvested. Efficient drainage of the soil is almost as effective against the ravages of frost as against the damage from rain. Many famines in Great Britain have been shown to be directly the result of frost. In France, and other wine and olive producing countries, the damage occasioned by frost is immense. Such damage, as well as that occasioned by floods, is there a recognized branch of insurance business.

3. Drought. In all climates of a tropical character drought plays an important part in retarding the development of vegetation. When combined with moisture, solar heat affords the most certain means of securing luxuriance; without the moisture there is absolute sterility. The early Bible records refer to the rising of the waters of the Nile as the event upon which the fertility of Egypt depends. About 1060 the overflowing of this great river failed for seven successive years, occasioning one of the greatest famines of history. Two provinces were wholly depopulated; and in another half the inhabitants perished. Even in temperate climates long-continued drought is very disastrous.

4. Other Meteorological Phenomena.-Under this general designation has to be included several causes more or less directly or remotely contributing to famines. (a) Comets.

The appearance of these has often coincided with periods of drought; they are also frequently associated with excessive heat. But heat, except in so far as it may superinduce drought, is not detrimental to the grain crops; while, in relation to fruit crops, and more especially that of the vine, not only is the quality of the produce greatly