AUSTRALIAN GROUP RELATIONS. 821 



take their own course, and cut the gordian knot of restriction by elope- 

 ment. In Gippsland, where these restrictions were of exceptional ex- 

 tent, so as to form a net in whose meshes every individual Kurnai was 

 almost certainly entangled, the solution of the difficulties raised by the 

 nearly absolute impossibility of obtaining the consent of parents was 

 found in the practice of elopement, which was the most prevalent form 

 of marriage. 



VIII. — THE CHANGE IN THE LINE OF DESCENT. 



In a late memoir* dealing with the change of descent in Australian 

 tribes, the practice of infant betrothal was assigned as probably the 

 chief cause of the change. But I have come to see at the root of be- 

 trothal the belief which I have noted in a previous section of this mem- 

 oir, "that the child is derived from the male parent only, and that the 

 mother is no more than its nurse." This belief has been active in other 

 directions. It has aided the local organization, whose perpetuation from 

 father to son is its direct expression, to over-ride the social organization ; 

 and, together with betrothal, which produces the sense of separate own- 

 ership, it has tended to bring about ultimately individual marriage, 

 with a change of descent from the "group of female Piraoru " to the 

 individual male " Noa." 



This belief in the renewal of a man in his son is not, nor has it been, 

 confined to the Australian aborigines. It is probably as old as the time 

 when men first began to speculate upon the phenomena within and with- 

 out themselves. Dr. Hearn, in his valuable work, the Aryan House- 

 hold^ shows that the " worship of the house-father" is founded on the 

 very belief which I find among the Australian savages. It is found 

 distinctly enunciated in passages of the classical writers, and it forms 

 the central idea on which iEschylus has caused the third part of his 

 majestic Orestean trilogy to turn. Often as the case of Orestes has been 

 quoted, it seems to me that, as examined by the side-lights of Australian 

 custom, there may be even yet some views of it whose significance has 

 not been clearly seen. I may be excused for briefly considering it here, 

 because it seems to me to raise some curious questions as to the exist- 

 ence of uterine descent among the Hellenic ancestors. 



out of the combined influence of class divisions and of locality. These tribes are 

 divided socially into four classes, which cover at least sixty-four local groups. Ac- 

 cording to my present information (which is not yet complete) the matrimonial 

 restriction arising put of the four classes is as usual, but in addition a man's choice 

 is in every case confined to « few of the local groups. (Informant, Rev. H. Kempe.) 



I have endeavored to show in the Dieri the prohibitions arising out of class and 

 close relationship, and in the Kurnai those arising out of close relationship and local- 

 ity. In the Aldolinga all these restricting forces combine, and result in the narrow- 

 ing down of the matrimonial choice to an incredibly small fraction of the whole 

 uuuiber of women. 



• " From Mother-right to Father-right," by A.W. Howitt and Lorimer Fison. Jour- 

 nal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. August 1882. 



t The Aryan Household. W. E. Hearn, LL. D. G. Robertson, Melbourne, 1878. See 

 also De Coulanges, La Cite" Antique, p. 37, Paris, 1876. 



