outh wishing to marry makes music day by day
at the maid's door, till, if willing, she comes out to him,
and when they are agreed, the parents are told, and the
marriage feast is prepared in the bride's house, whence the
bridegroom returns no more to his father, regarding his
father-in-law's house as his own, and himself as the support
of it, while his own father's house is no more to him than
in Europe the bride's home is henceforth to her when she
quits it to live with her husband. Thus the Formosans set no
store on sons, but aspire to have daughters, who procure
them sons-in-law to become the support of their old age."

It will be noted that here the house is spoken of as the father's, and
not as belonging to the mother. The bridegroom is the suitor, and we
see the creeping in of property considerations always associated with
the rise of father-right. Though the husband has as yet no recognised
position and lives in the wife's home, he is valued for his service to
his father-in-law, clearly a step in the direction of property
assertion. Among many of the Malay hill tribes of Formosa the maternal
system is dying out, though the old law forbidding marriage within the
clan remains in force.

These changes must be expected wherever the transition towards
father-right has begun; the older forms of courtship and marriage, so
favourable to the woman, are replaced by patriarchal customs. One or
two curious examples of primitive courtship, in which the initiative
is taken entirely by the girl may be noted here. Among the Garos tribe
it is not only the privilege, but the duty of the girl to select her
lover, while an infringement of this rule is severely and summarily
punished. Any declaration made on the part of the young man is
regarded as an insult to the whole _mahari_ (motherhood) to which the
girl belongs, a stain only to be expiated by liberal presents made at
the expense of the _mahari_ of the over-forward lover. The marriage
customs are equally curious. On the morning of the wedding a ceremony
very similar to capture takes place, only it is the bridegroom who is
abducted. He pretends to be unwilling and runs away and hides, but he
is caught by the friends of the bride. Then he is taken by force,
weeping as he goes, in spite of the resistance and counterfeited grief
of his parents and friends, to the bride's house, where he takes up
his residence with his mother-in-la