sexual intercourse with her one after another. But after that the girl is regarded as the wife of the young man who planned the abduction. And again, if an abducted woman deserts her husband and is caught by another man, she becomes the wife of the latter and the first has lost his privilege. Alongside of and within the generally existing group marriage such exclusive relations are formed, pairing for a shorter or longer term by the side of polygamy, so that here also group marriage is declining. The question is only which will first disappear under the pressure of European influence: group marriage or the Papuans addicted to it.
The marriage in whole classes, such as is in force in Australia, is no doubt a very low and primitive form of group marriage, while the Punaluan family, so far as we know, is its highest stage of development. The former seems to be corresponding to the social stage of roving savages, the latter requires relatively settled communistic bodies and leads directly to the next higher stage of development. Between these two, we shall no doubt find many an intermediate stage. Here lies a barely opened, hardly entered field of investigation.17
3. THE PAIRING FAMILY.
A certain pairing for a longer or shorter term took place even during the group marriage or still earlier. A man had his principal wife (one can hardly call it favorite wife as yet) among many women, and he was to her the principal husband among others. This fact in no small degree contributed to the confusion among missionaries, who regarded group marriage now as a disorderly community of women, now as an arbitrary adultery. Such a habitual pairing would gain ground the more the gens developed and the more numerous the classes of "brothers" and "sisters" became who were not permitted to marry one another. The impulse to prevent marriage of consanguineous relatives started by the gens went still further. Thus we find that among the Iroquois and most of the Indians in the lower stage of barbarism marriage is prohibited between all