Statutes exist in the different states making adultery and fornication criminal offenses, but generally omit to state of what the offenses shall consist. The courts, therefore, have adopted the common law definition. And thus it is held that an unmarried man having sexual intercourse with a married woman, commits adultery; but that neither a married nor- a single man can commit the offense with an unmarried woman.15 But in some jurisdictions the courts seem to follow the ecclesiastical law and hold that illicit sexual intercourse between a man and woman, either of whom is married, is adultery in the married person.16 So that a married man, according to this doctrine, commits the offense by having sexual intercourse with a single woman;17 but the single woman would not be guilty of the offense.18 Hence, criminal connection between a single man and a married woman is not adultery in the man, though it is in the woman.

12 2 McClain Cr. Law, Sec. 1151. 13 3 Blackstone Com., 139. 14 1 Bish. New Cr. Law, Sec. 38; Hughes' Cr. Law, Sec. 1949.

15 State vs. Pearce, 2 Blackf. (Ind.), 318; State vs. Taylor, 58 N. H., 331.

16 Ter. vs. Whitcomb, 1 Mont., 359.