that form of family organization which was once characteristic of all the Ayrans. This is the joint undivided family, composed of the "male descendants of a common ances tor, any males who have been adopted by members of the family, and the wives, widows, and unmarried daughters of the male members; all of whom are living as a joint Hindu family, and none of whom have separated from others." (Sir W. C. Petheram; second article on "English Judges and Hindu Law," L. Q. R., 1899. P- *75-) All of these are joint owners in the family property, and offer sacrifices to the same common ancestor. Students of Roman Law know that this description of an existing Hindu family applies with absolute accuracy to the early Roman family. Those of us who were brought up on the works of Sir Henry Maine, are not likely to forget how that interesting and plausible writer finds in the patriarchal family the germ of our modern social organization. The paterfamilias or patriarch governs his household, which includes his sons and their wives and families. As he has the power of life and death over all the members of the family, he can easily repress any tendency on the part of an unruly son to take too seriously his position as a joint-owner of the family property. Where one of the jointowners can play ducks and drakes with the common property, while the other owners have to grin and bear it, community of prop erty seems rather a misnomer. This was the happy position of the Roman paterfamilias, and the same liberal powers are enjoyed by the Canadian husband over the property which, in theory, belongs to his wife as much as to himself. (C. C.. 1292). The patriarch is the king and priest of the family. Tne families of Abraham and other patri archs as described in Genesis are looked upon by Maine as illustrating this theory. Each family is an independent unit, forming no part of any larger organization such as a state, or even as a tribe. And, in Maine's view, these larger organisms were formed by
the gradual extension of such patriarchal families. If the descendants of the same patriarch continued to live near each other, they became in time a clan, and sometimes out of the confederation of several clans, perhaps united for war under some powerful chief, there would grow up a rude kind of nation. The theory of evolution has, how ever, led many modern writers to look much further back into the mists of antiquity. Even the pterodactyl is a creature of yester day, compared with the simple organisms which flourished when all the world was young. And it is now earnestly contended that the patriarchal family was the outcome of a long process of social development. In the Roman family, as we know it from the earliest records, relationship is only recog nized on the father's side. The daughter when she marries becomes a stranger to her father's house. She passes into the family of her husband. His people are her people, and his gods her gods. She and her de scendants have henceforth no part nor lot in her original family. They are not agnates, and the law looks only at agnatic kinship. To us nothing seems more obvious that the fact that a man is as much related to his mother's brother as to his father's brother. But at a certain stage in the history of many of the Aryan peoples, a mother's brother is no relation at all. Sir Henry Alaine fixes on this stage as being the start ing point. His modern opponents, on the other hand, maintain that long before this stage was reached there had been a time when the only relationship known was that on the side of the mother. This system is still followed by many uncivilized peoples. Among many tribes of savages society is or ganized on the clan system. The clan consists of a number of persons—sometimes as many as five hundred, but generally fewer—who live together in a village. They all claim to be the descendants of a common ancestor, and hear the same family-name. The name is taken from some animal or natural object. They are all called rattle-snakes, corn-stalks,
