There were tribes where the basis of kinship was agnate, but these were the exceptions.

In Korea, for instance, he can only adopt an agnate and one of a lower generation than his own.

But persons related only by blood through females are not agnates, but merely cognates.

At Le Locle, in the Jura, he wrote Agnate and the Merman; and in October 1834 he arrived in Rome.

In default of a testamentary guardian, the statute of the Twelve Tables assigns the guardianship to the nearest agnates, who are hence called statutory guardians.