2 RECORDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



according to the primary exogamous groups of which the con- 

 tracting parties are members. This is an essential before it can 

 be publicly recognised, its breach constituting, according to the 

 district where committed, a crime punishable by death (e.g., 

 North- West Districts) down to a matter for ridicule and contempt 

 (Tully River). Indeed, in those rare cases of what might be 

 called irregular marriages, the rest of the community will assist 

 another boy with more lawful claim, i.e., an individual of the 

 suitable exogamous group, to get possession of the woman in 

 question for himself. Furthermore, under such circumstances 

 both parties are continually being ridiculed, nagged and sneered 

 at by the other females, a course of action usually quite sufficient 

 to cause a separation. 



2. But because the two would-be contracting parties do actually 

 belong to suitable exogamous groups, it does not necessarily 

 follow that all impediments to the proposed marriage are removed. 

 For instance, in the North- West generally, a man cannot marry 

 his father's sister's daughter, his mother's brother's daughter, or 

 his daughter's daughter, while a woman must carnally avoid her 

 mother's brother's son, her father's sister's son, or her son's son, 

 etc., notwithstanding the fact that these particular relationships 

 are necessarily located in the same exogamous groups 1 which 

 otherwise would be allowed to join in permanent sexual part- 

 nership. Similarly, on the Bloomtield River, where the social 

 nomenclature has also been worked out, the same thing applies. 



The same holds true for other districts equally remote from one 

 another, the commonly accepted view that the complicated 

 systems of class-organisation met with amongst the different 

 tribes act as a check on consanguinity requiring re-consideration. 

 Indeed, ever since I suggested 2 a probable interpretation of the 

 class-systems, closer investigation has led me to believe in its 

 reality, viz., that they have been devised, by a process of natural 

 selection, to regulate the food supply. And so far as the food 

 supply is concerned, the group-system certainly regulates marriage, 

 but just as surely it does not check consanguinity. Even 

 amongst types of black folk where the standard of morality is 

 even for a primitive people comparatively low, and where but 

 little attention from a marital point of view need necessarily be 

 paid io the exogamous groups, e.g., on the Tully River, there is 

 an absolute absence of familiarity between blood brother and 

 si^t'-r. Whatever the general faults of the natives may be, incest 



1 Roth — Ethnol. Studies, etc., 1897, Sect. 65, table. 



2 Roth— Ethnol. Studies, etc., 1897, Sect. 71. 



