692 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION G. 



])e regarded as a capital ojftence if the relationship between 

 the parties were not felt to be a real one .'' 



4. The whole system can be shown to be the necessary 

 outcome of the exog'amous intermarrying divisions which are 

 found among savage tribes in all parts of the world. 



The Groups in Australia. 



We may now examine those divisions as they present 

 themselves to us among the Australian aborigines. 



Throughout nearly all the tribes from one end of the 

 continent to the other there run two great intermarrying 

 divisions, each having a distinctive title, which is probably in 

 every case a totem, and which is borne by every one of its 

 members. Every man, for instance, in the Darhng River 

 country is either Kilpara or Mukwara — i.e., either Eagle- 

 hawk or Crow — so also is every woman. Among the 

 Kamilaroi,^' or Kamilrai, every member of the tribes is either 

 Dilbe or Kupathin. A Dilbe man cannot marry a Dilbe 

 woman ; he must go to the Kupathins, every female of whom 

 on his own level in the generation is his possible wife, as far 

 as the primary divisions are concerned, though we shall see 

 by and by that his matrimonial choice is restricted. So also 

 a Kupathin man cannot marry a Kupathin woman ; he must 

 get a Dilbe. 



This is as if — to put the thing in a famihar form — all the 

 people of Hobart, and indeed of all Tasmania, were made up 

 of Smiths and Browns. JNo Smith can marry a Smith; no 

 Brown can marry a Brown. Mr. Smith must look out for 

 a Miss Brown ; Mr. Brown must go courting to a Miss 

 Smith ; but ail the Misses Smith are eligible to him, and he 

 may get as many of them as he can ; they are all of them 

 his potential wives. Now, if the whole community be thus 

 divided, it is evident that there must be a very large number 

 in each class between whom there is no relationship at all 

 according to our own notions ; but the notions of the savage 

 difter from ours, and to him all the young Browns are tribal 

 brothers and sisters, and if young Brown takes to himself 

 any Miss Brown, however remote from him she may seem to 

 us to be, the whole division will be filled with horror, and the 

 two offenders will be put to death, or at all events very 

 severely punished. So real is this relationship to the savage, 



* Ka/nllfiroi — This was the Rev. W. Ridley's reuclei-ing of the word, but 

 his ear was not to be depended upon for catching the correct sounds of the 

 native words. 



