he had no children, rolling on the ground with
laughter, he answered that, with them, men have no children, only women.

"I can assure you," our informant goes on to write, "that even the heir
of King Bell in Cameroon _is the King's nephew, and not one of his
sons_. The so-called children of King Bell, several of whom are now
going through training in German cities, are merely children of his
wives, _whose fathers are unknown_; one of them I might, possibly, claim
for myself."

What say the adversaries of the theory of descent in the female line to
this sketch drawn from the immediate present? Our informant is a man
with eyes open, who probed things to the very bottom. How many of those
who live among these semi-savage races, do as much? Hence the wild
accounts about the "immorality" of the natives.

Furthermore, there come to our notice the memorials of the Imperial
Government, submitted to the Reichstag on the German colonies (Session
of 1894-95). In the memorial on the Southwestern territory of Africa
there occurs this passage, p. 239: "Without their advice--the oldest and
wealthiest--he (chief of the tribe in principal village) can not render
the slightest decision, and not the men only, _but quite often the women
also_, even the servants, _express their opinion_."

In the report of the Marshall Islands, p. 254 of the memorial, it runs
thus: "The ruling power over all the islands of the Marshall group never
rested in the hands of a single chieftain.... _Seeing, however, that no
female member of this class (the Irody) is alive, and only the mother
conveys nobility and rank to the child, the Irodies dies out with their
chieftain._" The expression used, and the descriptions made, by
reporters betray what an utter blank are to them the conditions that
they refer to: they can not find their bearings among them.

With an increasing population, there arise a number of sisters, which,
in turn, produce daughter gentes. Over and against these, the mother
gens appears as phratry. A number of phratries constitute a tribe. This
social organization is so firm that it still constituted the foundation
for the military organization in the old States, after the old gentile
constitution had fallen to pieces. The tribe splits up into several
tribes, all of which have the same constitution, and in each of which
the old gentes are reproduced. However, seeing that the gentile
constitution forbids the intermarriage of brothers and sist