BY WALTER E. ROTH. 49 



members to discard those dietaries of Avhich there might other- 

 wise prove a scarcity. 



Holding as I do the above views, I am incHned to beheve 

 that the gradual evolution of the class systems in general took 

 place on lines somewhat as follows : — - 



{(() The food supply being inadequate to the increased 

 population, the elders (the stronger) combine to force the 

 younger (the weaker) to limit themselves to certain articles of 

 diet. Eemnants of this are to be found in the examples already 

 cited from the East Central Queensland coast ; others are 

 recorded from Western Australia, etc. 



(h) The stage when the younger (the weaker) progressively 

 increasing in number and gradually insisting on l)eing heard, 

 come to terms with the elder (the stronger) and mutually agree 

 in dividing themselves into two parties, each admitting the 

 rights of the other to certain dietaries. To maintain this 

 arrangement as far as possible in sttitu </un, these two divisions 

 became exogamous. This separation of the tribes into two 

 primary divisions and nothing more, is fairly common in 

 Australia, <.//., the doo-ar and the tar-boo of the liloomfield 

 River, (Q). blacks. There is every probability of this stage 

 being both contemporary with, and subsequent to, stage {n) ; the 

 youngest and weakest here and there being still prohibited from 

 certain food- stuffs. 



fr J An analogous siibdivision, for similar reasons, of each 

 primary division into two again, making the four (secondary) 

 divisions met with throughout North-West Central Queensland. 

 Further advances on these lines would be the cases recorded at 

 Burketown (N. Queensland) of divisions into six and into eight. 

 The exogamy of stage 'h/ is still retained ; in other words, the 

 divisions have arrived at that period where they actually regulate 

 the marriage rules : — the sexual regulations are equalling and 

 gradually overpowering the food regulations. During this stage 

 the various animals, etc., tabooed by each division pi-ogressively 

 come to have that social and religious interdependence with 

 human beings (recorded from several parts of the Australian 

 Continent) which may be called Totemism. So far, I have met 

 with no examples of Totemism in Northern or North- 



