OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: MARCH 12, 1872. 427 



as her principal husband, but without an exclusive cohabitation. Asso- 

 ciated with them for mutual subsistence and protection were other 

 similar pairs, living with their children in a common household, with a 

 restricted but not prohibited cohabitation. The barbarian family, as it 

 now exists in the Ganowanian family, approaches the civilized family. 

 It is founded upon marriage between single pairs, with fragmentary 

 families of near kindred united in a common household ; but with the 

 conjugal privilege above indicated either extinct, or reduced to narrow 

 limits. At the time of their discovery the more advanced were living 

 in large communal houses, and practising communism in living as far as 

 the same could be carried out in practical life. Conjugal fidelity was 

 exacted of the women, but not of the men. Where a man can put away 

 his wife at pleasure, as he may in most barbarous nations, and always 

 could among the old Romans, continence is not the highest virtue.* 



Mr. Fison in Memorandum A has deduced theoretically the Tura- 

 nian system of consanguinity from Kamilaroi kinship. It is both in-- 

 genious and interesting, and fully sustained by the principles of the 

 tribal system. The actual system, when procured, will probably agree 

 with the theoretical substantially, but fall below it in some particulars. 

 Mr. Fison furnished schedules of consanguinity and affinity of the 

 Yarras, near Melbourne, and of the Murray bands near Victoria, but 

 neither is sufficiently perfect to establish the exact character of the 

 system. It is partly Malayan, but chiefly Turanian in form, and 

 evidently in the transition stage from one into the other. This was to 

 have been expected from the condition of the tribal organization 

 among the Kamilaroi, and which is presumptively in the same stage 

 among the Yarras and Murray bands. 



It is perhaps unnecessary to remark that the Kamilaroi people have 

 each a personal name to distinguish the individual. When we say 

 Ippai marries Kapota, we simply mean that a male of the Ippai class 

 marries a female of the Kapota class. f 



* The American Indians describe divorce, " throwing a woman away " ; thus 

 adding contempt to injury. The Romans divorced their wives of their own volition ; 

 but the right was subject to the obligation of restoring the dower of the wife. Ovid, 

 as we know, put away two wives, and Cicero two. Divortium, whence divorce, 

 originally related to the putting away of a wife exclusively. 



t Savages seem to have a tendency to classify persons into groups. The tribes 

 of the Maranoa district, Queensland, who speak the Unghi dialect, divide the males 

 into classes according to age. Up to seventeen or eighteen years of age a male is 



