THE EEGULATION OF NUMBEES 205 



members of the tribe. ' Every male has some portion of land, 

 of which he can always point out the exact boundaries. These 

 properties are subdivided by a father among his sons during his 

 own lifetime, and descend in almost hereditary succession.' ^ As 

 further examples of the ideas held by the Australians on the 

 subject of property, it may be noticed that Smyth describes 

 individual property in trees which passes by inheritance,^ while 

 Lumholtz says that ' if a native finds a hive of honey in a tree, 

 but has not an immediate opportunity of chopping it out, he can 

 safely leave it till some other day ; the discoverer owns it, and 

 nobody else will touch it, if he has either given an account of it 

 or marked the tree, as is the custom in some parts of Western 

 Queensland '.^ 



Wherever we turn we find similar evidence of the recognition 

 of distinct areas over which groups have more or less exclusive 

 rights.^ Every tribe certainly has its own clearly defined terri- 

 tory ; it seems further very probable that in most places the 

 tribal territory is divided among local groups, if indeed the 

 subdivision does not go farther. The Bushmen were formerly 

 divided into tribes occupying ' well defined tracts of country, 

 which they looked upon as their own ancestral hunting ground '.^ 

 Their respect for property is shown by the fact that, when a man 

 found a bees' nest, he put his mark upon it, and thenceforward 

 it became ' the sacred property of the finder '.^ Klutschak 

 describes distinct territories for the Eskimo tribes, who confine 

 their seasonal migrations to these definite areas.' Subdivision 

 of land does not seem to go farther than subdivision among the 

 villages ; the inhabitants of a village had the right to refuse to 

 allow any strangers to settle permanently in the neighbourhood. 

 ' If a new family wished to settle at an inhabited place, the 

 newcomers had to await the consent of the people already settled 

 there, which was given by certain signs of civility or welcome, 

 the strangers having meanwhile put their boat ashore, but not 

 yet begun bringing up their goods. If these signs were not given 

 they pushed the boat off again and went on to look for another 

 place.' ^ It is so well known that the American Indians recognized 

 clearly defined tribal boundaries that we need not attempt to 



* Eyre, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 297. ^ Smyth, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 145. 



' Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 147. * See Grosse, Die Fonnen der Familie, 



p. 35. * Stow, loc. cit., p. 35. * Ibid., p. 86. ' Klutschak, loc. cit., 

 p. 227. 8 Rink, loc. cit., p. 31. 



