Another curious custom adopted by the Khadals in imitation of the Hindus is that of marrying adult boys and girls, for whom a partner has not been found, to a tree.

But this does not occur when they arrive at puberty as among Hindu castes, but when a boy still unmarried becomes thirty years old and a girl twenty.

In such a case he or she is married to a mango, cotton or _jamun_ tree, and after this no second ceremony need be performed on subsequent union with a wife or husband.

A widower must pay Rs.

10, or double the usual price, for a second wife, owing to the risk of her death being caused by the machinations of the first wife's spirit.