distinguish de jure from de facto unions, partly in the fact that one may be transformed into the other, and no ceremony of any sort mark the change.  An Australian may, for example, have a wife who is recognised as his by tribal custom and tradition; if she is abducted the aggrieved husband may vindicate his rights but will not necessarily be supported by even his own kin, and will certainly not find anything to correspond to the tribunal before which an Englishman would sue for the restitution of conjugal rights.  If the aggrieved husband proves the weaker, he necessarily abandons his wife, and she becomes ipso facto the wife of the aggressor; divorce is in fact pronounced by the issue of an ordeal by combat.  So far the matter is clear to the observer.

But if the aggrieved husband take no steps to vindicate his rights, the woman will equally pass to the aggressor, and in this case there will be no customary ceremonial to mark for the benefit of the observer the exact moment of the transition from a marriage, recognised by public opinion, or tribal custom, with the first husband A to the same kind of union with B.

Again, even where no second mate intervenes to complicate the question, the observer may be confronted with delicate problems; at what point, for example, does a mere liaison pass into something worthy of the name of marriage?  What is the status of a union in which the parties are more or less permanently associated, but which confers no rights as against aggressors?  If by native custom the union is not of such a nature as to confer on the male party to it any rights over the female, such as the liberty to chastise or punish without fear of the intervention of the woman’s kin, are we to regard the tie as equivalent to marriage if only it is permanent?  At what point does mere cohabitation pass into marriage?

All these are questions which have to be debated and decided before we are in possession of a suitable terminology for dealing with the unions of the sexes in the lower stages of culture.  But they are commonly neglected in controversies as to the origin and history of human marriage.

We have seen above that in a European community we mean by marriage a union between two persons of opposite sexes, entered into with due legal formalities, and not dissoluble simply at the will of either or both the parties concerned.  When we go further afield the connotation of the term is extended to embrace (1) polygyny, in which one male is associated with two or more females, (2) polyandry, in which one female is similarly associated with more than one male, and (3) the condition which I propose to term polygamy, in which both these conditions are found.  In all these cases the union is properly termed marriage, in so far as it cannot be entered upon without due formalities nor be dissolved without the concurrence of the authority upon the carrying out of whose conditions in the preliminary steps the union depends for its marriage-character.