AUSTRALIAN GROUP RELATIONS. 809 



Australia; the most advanced are tbose which are found along the 

 southeastern coastline. These can be taken as the two extremes of a 

 series in which all the tribes I have examined can be arranged accord- 

 ing to tbeir social status. I am not prepared to show all the causes 

 which have advanced the coast tribes far beyond those in the center of 

 the continent, but this much may be ventured upon, that the social 

 advance appears to be connected with a more favored climate, and the 

 greater abundance and regularity of food-supply consequent thereupon. 



The tribes which I have already described have a marked social organi- 

 zation with uterine descent. In the tribes with which I am about to 

 deal the social organization has been profoundly modified, and in some 

 cases even extinguished all but the faintest traces; while, in an equal 

 degree, the local organization has gained strength, and taken to itself 

 all the powers which the social organization formerly possessed. For 

 comparison, I take the Kurnai and the Coast Marring tribes, which 

 stand near the end of the series, at whose other extremity are the Died 

 and Kunaudaburi. 



The Karnia tribe inhabit Gippslaud and the Coast Murring the coun- 

 try extending from the confines of Gippsland along the southeastern 

 coast towards Sydney. For the purposes of this memoir the Shoalhaven 

 Elver may be taken as their approximate limit in that direction. The 

 two tribes touch at Mallagoota Inlet, where their extreme local sections 

 intermarry.* 



The Kurnai tribe is divided into five large clans,t which again are 

 divided into local subdivisions, until the smallest group consists of only 

 a few members. Of class divisions the Kurnai have none, and the ouiy 

 remaining traces of totems are two birds, the name of one of which is 

 borne by all the males and that of the other by all the females of the 

 tribe. Traces of the two great class divisions of the stock from which 

 the Kurnai are probably derived — the classes Eaglehawk (Bunjil) and 

 Crow (Waa, or Ngarugal) — are found in the application of Bunjil to all 

 the old men of the tribe, and in the extreme reverence felt for the 

 crow. The Kurnai believe that it can talk their language, and that it 

 is in the habit of warning them of approaching danger. In this tribe 

 the class organization, so far as it affects marriage, is extinct. The 

 local organization, however, has stepped into the place thus left vacant. 

 It has assumed authority over marriage, and it regards all those who 

 were born in the same locality as necessarily so near in blood as to be 

 forbidden to each other in marriage. A man therefore is compelled by 

 this rule to seek a wife in some more distant part of the tribal territory, 

 and from certain local groups, to the exclusion of others. Moreover, 

 in this tribe the remarkable custom of marriage by elopement has be- 

 come developed to such an extent that only under exceptional circum- 

 stances can a man obtain a wife in anv other manner. 



*For further details as to the remarkable organization and customs of this tribe, 

 see "Kamilaroi and Kurnai," Robertson, Melbourne. 



tl use the word "clan" advisedly here, because this tribe has agnatic descent. The 

 term ''horde" I use tor local divisions of tribes having uterine descent. 



