five hundred and thirty different surnames in the whole country; sixty blows are inflicted upon any one who marries a person of the same surname. Punishment for intermar riage of near relatives on the father's side is very severe, thus one who marries a granduncle, a father's first cousin, a brother or a nephew, is put to death. Besides these pro hibitions there are others applying within a narrower range on the mother's side; one who marries his mother's sister, or his sis ter's daughter, is strangled. Less severe is the punishment for marrying his uterine halfsister. Kighty blows are given to one who marries his father's sister's daughter, moth er's brother's daughter, or mother's sister's daughter. The penal code permits inter marriage between the children of brothers and sisters, or of sisters, but forbids it be tween those of brothers. Marriage with a deceased brother's widow is punished with strangulation, whilst mar riage with a deceased wife's sister is very common and has always been regarded as very honorable. The Code also interdicts occasional inter course with any of those relations with whom marriage is prohibited, the punish ment in both cases being the same. A Chinese woman on marriage alienates herself from her own family and is incorpo rated into that of her husband; hence chil dren of brothers and sisters, and of sisters, may marry at pleasure, while those of brothers cannot be united under pain of death. The polygamy of China is a legalized con cubinage, and the law actually prohibits the taking of a second wife in the lifetime of the first. The first wife is usually taken out of a family equal in rank to that of the hus band's, and the marriage, as we have seen, is attended with considerable ceremony, and the lady is entitled to all the rights and priv ileges of the mistress of the family. After this {he man may espouse other women, but without the ceremonies and without consult ing his friends; he may take them from any
class of society and bring them into his house as inferior wives, or concubines, or handmaidens, or whatever he chooses to call them. The first wife is invested with a cer tain amount of power over the concubines, who may not even sit in her presence with out her special permission. She addresses her partner as "husband," they call him "master. A wife cannot be degraded into the position of a concubine, nor can a con cubine be raised to that of a wife so long as the wife is alive, under the penalty in one case of a hundred, in the other, of ninety blows. It would seem that the concubine is usually taken with the consent of the prin cipal wife when the latter is childless, the desire to have male children "to perpetuate one's name, and to burn incense before one's tablet after death, having great influence over the Chinese mind. The children of the inferior wives would appear to belong to the first wife. (Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 445; Ta Tsing Leu Lee, p. in.) According to Abbe Hue, a man may strike his wife with impunity, may starve her, may sell her or rent her out for a longer or a shorter period; other authorities do not ad mit this. A father-in-law, after the wedding, never again sees his daughter-in-law; he never visits her and if they chance to meet he hides himself. The Code contains seven just causes and good reasons for divorce of wives, namely, barrenness, lasciviousness, inattention to par ents-in-law, loquacity, thievishness, ill-tem per, confirmed infirmity: and a husband, except for one of these reasons, may not put away his wife under pain of eighty blows. In practice, however, these pretexts are very elastic. In one Chinese book we read: "When a woman has any quality which is not good, it is but just and reasonable to turn her out of doors." Among the ancients a woman was turned away if she allowed the house to be full of smoke, or if she fright ened the house-dog by a disagreeable voice
