1899.] MATHEWS — DIVISIONS OF NORTH AUSTRALIAN TRDiES. 75 



By Dr. liudolpli Biiti, of Baltimore, " On an Interesting 

 Fragment of the Book of the Dead." 



By the Committee on Historical Manuscripts, " A Calen- 

 dar of the Weedon and of the Richard Henry and Arthur 

 Lee Correspondence in the Library of the Society.' ' 



Dr. Samuel G. Dixon was elected a Councillor to fill the 

 unexpired term of Gen. Isaac J. Wistar, made vacant by his 

 election as a Vice-President of the Society. 



Mr. Harold Goodwin presented a framed engraving of John 

 Yaughan, who had served the Society as Secretary in 1789 and 

 1790, as Treasurer from 1791 to 1841, and as Librarian from 

 1803 to 18-12, and on motion the thanks of the Society were 

 returned therefor. 



The Societv was adjourned by the presiding of&cer. 



DIVISIONS OF NORTH AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 



BY R. H. MATHEWS, L.S. 

 {Read May 5, 1S99.) 



The division of a tribe into intermarrying sections or classes, 

 although one of the most interesting of the institutions recognized 

 among the Australian aborigines, has not hitherto received the 

 attention which its importance deserves. • In a former number of 

 the Proceedings of this Society^ I tabulated the names of eight 

 sections, with the rules of marriage and descent in force over a 

 large extent of country in the Northern Territory. Since then I 

 have reported* a similar eight-section system, but with different sec- 

 tional names, in the northwest corner of Queensland, extending 

 southerly from the Gulf of Carpentaria for a distance of about 

 three hundred miles, including the Wentworth, Nicholson, Greg- 

 ory and Upper Georgina rivers. 



In an article contributed to the Royal Society of New South 

 Wales in June, 1898, I described the eight sections of the Arrinda 

 tribe on the Finke, Todd and other rivers,' but, while that paper 



iPROC. Amer. Philos. Soc, xxxvii, 151-154. 



2 Journ. Roy. Soc. N. S. ?Fa/<?j, xxxii, 251, 252. 



3 Ibid., xxxii, 72. 



