accordance with the nature of descents. It is, therefore, a natural system, for the reason that the relationships recognized are those which actually exist. But it assumes as its fundamental basis the antecedent existence of marriage between single pairs. Before this system could come into existence, mankind must have raised themselves to this state of marriage; after which this form of marriage, and not nature, teaches the descriptive system of relationship. It is important that this distinction should be noted.

In the second form, consanguinei are never described by a combination of the primary terms; but they are classified into categories, and the same term of relationship is applied, without distinction, to each of the members of the same category. This is the system of the Malayan, Ganowanian, and Turanian families. It suggests the probability that there might have been a state of society in the primitive ages in which marriage between single pairs was unknown, in which the family, in its modern sense, was unknown; but in which a system of relationship might have originated in compound marriages in a communal family, and thus be in strict accordance with the nature of descents, and, therefore a natural system because it recognized the relationships actually existing. This suggestion should also be noted.

1. System of Relationship of the Aryan Family.

"A knowledge of the descriptive system became important for two principal reasons. First, it was necessary to find the limits of its spread to circumscribe the classificatory form: and, secondly, it was necessary to find the basis upon which it rested, to reach the instrumentalities by means of which the classificatory system, if it ever prevailed among the remote ancestors of the Aryan family, might possibly have been overthrown, and the descriptive substituted in its place.

comment.

As none of the characteristics of the former system are involved in the solution of the origin of the latter, it will be sufficient for my present purpose to present the substance of the Aryan form without The Roman, as found in the Pandects* and Institutes of Justinian, will be used as the typical system. Its completeness and perfection is due to the Roman civilians, and arose from a necessity for a code of descents, defining the relations of consanguinei to each other, to regulate the transmission of property by inheritance.

* Pand. Lib. XXXVIII. Tit. X. "De gradibus et adfinibus et nominibus eorum."

Just. Inst. Lib. III. Tit. VI. "De gradibus Cognationum."

Each collateral line, when fully extended, reaches to "trinepos," who is the sixth descendant in each line. If desirable to trace the line beyond him, he is made a new starting-point in the description, namely, "fratris trinepotis filius," and on to "fratris trinepotis trinepos," who is the twelfth descendant of my brother. In like manner, in the ascending series, "tritavus" becomes a new starting-point, which gives first "tritavi pater," the father of tritavus, and on to tritavi tritavus, who is the twelfth ancestor of Ego. This exhausts the capacity of the nomenclature of this admirable system.

It will be observed that consanguinei are bound together in virtue of their descent, through married pairs, from common ancestors; that they are divided into a lineal and several collateral lines; and that the collateral are perpetually divergent from the lineal. The relationship of each person to the central Ego is accurately defined, and preserved distinct by means of a descriptive phrase. With the exception of the primary terms of relationship, which are those for father and mother, son and daughter, brother and sister, grandparent and grandchild, and husband and wife; and with the further exception of the terms for uncle and aunt which are found in the Sanskritic, Hellenic, Romaic, Germanic, and Slavonic stock-languages; and also with the exception of nepos and its cognates, which has an eccentric use, the remainder of the system describes persons, leaving the relationship to implication. As before stated, the system, in its immediate origin, was purely descriptive. The Erse and Gaelic, which have no terms for uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, or cousin, is more strictly than the Roman the typical system of the Aryan family. This system will be dismissed without further