h a robin, and not infrequently mates for life; which is to say
that should one die, the other refuses to mate again.

It is claimed that the bald-headed eagle never varies from monogamy. A
mate once chosen, the union lasts until the death of either partner.
It does not follow from this, however, that the bald-headed eagle is a
creature of a superior moral conscience. It may be that he is guided
in his selection of a conjugal mate by an intuitional power
undeveloped by other types of life, or, which is far more probable, it
may be that his sexual nature is easily satisfied and that he has no
temperamental affinities or repulsions, in which event force of habit
would be the strongest actuating power. This explanation is in keeping
with the eagle character.

The point is that marriage, or what constitutes marriage, exists among
birds and animals, and that it antedates history as a social
institution among men. Another fact which we must concede, if we are
just, is that marriage apparently knows no systematic and upward
trend. There is, in fact, no determined evolution toward a definite
and conclusive practice of monogamy, although the monogamic custom is
recognized as the evolutionary type among the civilized races of
today. Nevertheless, it would be folly to imply that a strict monogamy
obtains in the letter of the word, or that social exigencies might not
reinstate polygamy as a legalized custom.

Passing over those forms of mating, which may be classed as
sex-promiscuity, such, for example, as exist among the Esquimaux, and
also among the Dyaks, of Borneo, where a "contract" is made for a
night by the simple expediency of the man and the woman exchanging
head-gear, we come to one of the earliest and most general forms of
marriage among primitive peoples, where the parents arranged a
marriage between their children for reasons of personal profit. In
these instances, neither the youth nor the girl was consulted and
generally did not meet until they met to consummate the marriage. In
fact, they seemed not to have any preferences. These marriages were
easily broken, unless children resulted therefrom, when there seems
to have developed a sense of obligation to the offspring to continue
the family.

Marriage by capture grew out of the matriarchal system and came as the
very natural revolt of the male from the female rule, in which he had
no rights and no home with his spouse. Since the gens of the family
was the first