tions: the Warals, the
Magars and the Munnipurs. Recently it was described by M. Kovalevsky,
who discovered it among the Pshavs, Shevsurs, Svanets and other
Caucasian tribes. A few short notes about the existence of the gens
among Celts and Germans may find a place here.

The oldest Celtic laws preserved for us still show the gens in full
bloom. In Ireland, it is alive in the popular instinct to this day,
after it has been forced out of actual existence by the English. It was
in full force in Scotland until the middle of the eighteenth century,
and here it also succumbed only to the weapons, laws and courts of the
English.

The old Welsh laws, written several centuries before the English
invasion, not later than the 11th century, still show collective
agriculture of whole villages, although only exceptionally and as the
survival of a former universal custom. Every family had five acres for
its special use; another lot was at the same time cultivated
collectively and its yield divided among the different families. In view
of Irish and Scotch analogies it cannot be doubted that these village
communities represent gentes or subdivisions of gentes, even though a
repeated investigation of the Welsh laws, which I cannot undertake from
lack of time (my notes are from 1869), should not directly corroborate
this. One thing, however, is plainly proven by the Welsh and Irish laws,
namely that the pairing family had not yet given way to monogamy among
the Celts of the 11th century. In Wales, marriage did not become
indissoluble by divorce, or rather by notification, until after seven
years. Even if no more than three nights were lacking to make up the
seven years, a married couple could still separate. Their property was
divided among them: the woman made the division, the man selected his
share. The furniture was divided according to certain very funny rules.
If the marriage was dissolved by the man, he had to return the woman's
dowry and a few other articles; if the woman wished a separation, then
she received less. Of three children the man took two, the woman one,
viz., the second child. If the woman married again after her divorce,
and her first husband claimed her back, she was obliged to follow him,
even if she had one foot in her new husband's bed. But if two had lived
together for seven years, they were considered man and wife, even
without the preliminaries of a formal marriage. Chasteness of the girls
before marriage w