30 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



ways, although such child might not be the son of the chief 

 wife, but born of one of the muri-manu. All children of the 

 several wives would inherit the property of the parents — i.e., 

 they would have a share in the land and in any personal pro- 

 perty the parents might possess. The father would take the 

 children with him on hunting, fishing, and bird-snaring expe- 

 ditions, and thus they would be taught the land-boundaries, 

 and would learn the location of snaring-trees, bird-troughs, 

 &c. And in after-years the father would apportion such lands 

 among his children, the first-born son probably receiving the 

 largest share, if of a capable and influential personality. 

 Hence it will be seen that the children of the principal wife 

 did not necessarily take precedence over the others. 



Incest. 



We have already shown what marriages are deemed 

 incestuous by the Maori. It is worthy of note that the rules 

 in regard to marriage of relatives among the Maori nearly 

 resemble our own. Such a system does not appear to be 

 common among barbarous peoples. 



Professor Westermarck has stated that the horror of incest 

 is not an instructive sentiment (animals do not have it), but 

 rather a social habit, springing from sexual I'epulsion for per- 

 sons, even unrelated to the family, with whom one has been 

 brought up from infancy."'' 



Andrew Lang, in his " Custom and Myth," quotes Morgan 

 (of Primitive Sociology fame) as follows: "Primitive men 

 very eai'ly discovered the evils of close interbreeding " ; as also 

 the latter's statement that "early man discovered that 

 children of unsound constitutions were born of nearly related 

 parents." Mr. Lang goes on to say, " Mr. Morgan supposes 

 early man to have made a discovery (the evils of the mar- 

 riage of near kin) which evades modern physiological science. 

 Modern science has not determined that the marriages of 

 kinsfolk are pernicious. Is it credible that savages should dis- 

 cover a fact which puzzles science ? " Now, it may or may not 

 be credible, but how is it that the Maori holds this view, viz. : 

 that marriages of those closely related is followed by a tiyu- 

 heke (degeneration, deterioration) in the of3"spring'? For, as we 

 have seen, the Maori ai'e endogamous, and they have no totem 

 system, for exogamy or totemism might have been taken 

 as a cause for the Maori custom already given. Maine, 

 author of " Early Law," regards exogamy merely as a prohi- 

 bition of incest. The Maori idea may be summed up in the 

 words of an ancient proverbial saying of the people, " E moe 

 i to tuahine, he itiiti" — i.e., "Marry your tuahine and the 



* See Deniker's " Races of Man," chap. vii. 



