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 CHAPTER V.

POLYANDRY.

I. Sexual Proportion of Births: its Influence on Marriage.—Sexual proportion amongst animals—The state of this in Europe—Its variations according to race and profession—Its oscillations—Proportion of the sexes disturbed by war, by infanticide, and by the sale of daughters—Polyandry has not been general. II. Ethnography of Polyandry.—Examples of polyandry—Great polyandrous centres—The polyandry of Thibet—The polyandry of the Naïrs. III. Polyandry in Ancient Arabia.—Its causes—Infanticide in Arabia—The legend of Caïs, the infanticide—Evolution of polyandry in Arabia—Mot' a marriage—Ba'al marriage. IV. Polyandry in General.—Matriarchal polyandry and patriarchal polyandry. I. Sexual Proportion of Births, and its Influence on Marriage.

With the exception of the rare and singular forms of sexual or conjugal association which we have just passed in review, matrimonial types are not numerous among the peoples more or less civilised who have already instituted a marriage—that is to say, a sexual association regulated by generally admitted convention. The forms of marriage most universally practised, those which the majority of mankind has reached and stopped at, are polygamy and monogamy, or monandry. I shall have much to say of these. For the moment I shall treat of another kind of marriage, far less widely spread without doubt, but which, however, exists or has existed at divers points of the globe; I allude to polyandry.

I have no longer to prove that morality is variable and