810 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



In this tribe marriage is individual, as in the Noa practice of the 

 Dieri ; but men are never known to lend their wives to others,* nor 

 does anything like the Pirauru custom obtain. Nevertheless, there are 

 certain occasions when a practice arises similar to that of the Dieri, but 

 under the restrictions placed on the union of the sexes by locality and 

 not by class. In the case of marriage by elopement, the woman be- 

 comes for one day, under the jus primce noctis,\ the common property 

 of the bridegroom's "comrades." The faithless wife also becomes tbe 

 common property of the men who pursue her, until she is taken from 

 them by her husband or her brothers. On occasions such as the ap- 

 pearance of the Aurora Australis, the supposed impending danger to 

 the tribe is believed to be averted by a temporary exchange of wives 

 by order of the old men. 



The coast Murring consists of several tribes, or rather, large clans, 

 which have local names, but to which collectively the name of Murring 

 ( = men) is applied. These clans are again divided and subdivided down 

 to the smallest groups of a few individuals, each under the direction of 

 its oldest man. The large groups are governed by old men, who com- 

 bine the attributes of age and of powerful "magic," and the oldest and 

 most powerful wizard is the master (Biamban) of them all.J 



In the Murring tribes the class system is not completely extinct. 

 There are not the two primary classes, but there are numerous totems. 

 These descend, not from mother to child, as in tribes having uterine 

 descent, but from father to child, and in some localities they are borne 

 in duplicate. They are scarcely regarded as names, but still they have 

 a power over marriage, for no man may marry a woman of his own 

 budjan (totem). The principal control over marriage is, however, in 

 the local organization; for the rule is very strict that no man may 

 marry in his own locality. He must obtain a wife from certain fixed 

 localities at a distance from his own. In these tribes wives are ob- 

 tained by the exchange' of sisters — own or tribal — uuder the arrange- 

 ment of the respective fathers. The only occurrence of any of the 

 primitive forms of license with which I am acquainted, is when a 

 visitor from a distance is provided with a temporary wife by the hosts. 

 Also, in cases of elopement, when the woman is captured, she becomes 

 for a time the common property of her pursuers. With these excep- 

 tions, marriage seems to be strictly individual. 



I now give, in a tabulated form, the terms applicable to the marital 

 group as used by the two tribes under consideration, for comparison 

 with the Dieri and Kunandaburi terms given in Table II. 



* This applies, of course, to purely native custom as it prevailed before the incom- 

 ing of the white men. The mere immorality resulting from the contact of the two 

 races is not taken into account. 



t" Comrades" (Brogan.) See a paper on the Kurnai Jeraeil, communicated by me 

 to the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. 



t This "master" must not be taken as the equivalent of the " hereditary chief," 

 found in more advanced tribe9, such as the Fijians, &c. 



