V.] THE OCEANIC NEGROES: AUSTRALIANS. 155 



for granted probably by most ethnologists. Mr Fison assumes 

 that formerly there was no individual marriage, but that the class 

 formed two or more " groups," in which the males of one had 

 as wives the females of the other or of some other, but that later 

 this promiscuous arrangement gave way in some measure in 

 practice though not in theory to individual marriage, the man 

 still retaining a more or less exclusive right to certain women, 

 who stand to him in the relation of wives. In fact " marriage is 

 theoretically communal," the relation being not of one individual 

 to another, but of one group to another, while the ancient assumed 

 rule underlies the present assumed lax usage. Without entering 

 into details, it will suffice here to state generally that, after a 

 careful enquiry into the whole subject on the spot, Mr Curr 

 sweeps all these assumptions away, disproves the "facts" on which 

 they are based, and shows convincingly that the promiscuity here 

 in question neither did nor does exist in any part of Australia. 

 Is it too much to hope that visionary group or communal systems, 

 supposed to be survivals of an equally visionary state of pro- 

 miscuity, may be henceforth banished from works dealing with 

 the primitive social institutions of mankind? 



Another redeeming quality of the natives is their high sense 

 of humour, and mimetic powers comparable to . 

 those of the African Negritoes. " What is comic to Humour and 

 the blacks strikes them at once, and makes them 

 laugh immediately. They are very humorous, have a decided 

 talent for drollery, and are skilful mimics. I once saw a 

 young Australian receive an order from his master, whereupon 



contributes a Prefatory Note, fully accepts it with all its logical consequences : 

 "Amongst the Australian savages, as this memoir fully shows, groups of males 

 are found united to groups of females, not by any ceremony of a formal 

 marriage to which the groups are parties, but by an organic law, respected 'by 

 tribal usage, recognized over large areas, and followed in actual practice by 

 the cohabitation of the parties. A woman is found one day living with one 

 man in the marriage relation, and on the next day with another man of the 

 same group in the same relation, and perhaps several women with several 

 men at the same time" (p. 10). Of course Prof. Morgan's great authority, 

 as author of the now somewhat discredited Systems of Consanguinity and 

 Affinity of the Human Family, made the fortune of this absolutely baseless 

 theory. 



