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 In Australia, according to Howitt, the natives of the interior obtain as many wives as they can afford, not only from passional ardour, but because they are of use to them. A husband can lend his wives for a gift to young men who are unmarried, and by this means he may acquire property.

The property value of women in primitive societies undoubtedly encouraged plurality of wives. A man was esteemed in proportion to the number of women with whom he cohabited.

Wife purchase is not solely the custom of savage people, nor of living Oriental races. It was a practice of the early English and of all the Teutonic people; and the wedding-ring survives as a symbol of a sale-contract.

Havelock Ellis, quoting from the "Annual Register," for 1767, says that an English bricklayer's labourer sold a woman to a fellow workman "for a quarter guinea and a gallon of beer." We may suppose that the vendor subsequently regretted this transaction; for we read that the woman soon after inherited "£200 and some plate, left her by a deceased uncle in Devonshire."

The masculine desire for more than one wife (polygamy) has been more often expressed than the feminine desire for more than one husband (polyandry). On the whole, it is stated by some authorities