SURVIVALS EXIST IN ALL KINDS OF SOCIETIES 159 



(c) Eecent researches into the family system 

 among the Australian tribes has brought a number 

 of survivals to light. This is especially the case 

 with regard to the careful researches of Fison and 

 Howitt 1 who have shown that, independently of 

 their tribal divisions which are really territorial 

 groups the Australians are divided up into clans 

 or sexual groups comprising all the individuals with 

 the same Kobong. 2 



The members of these groups are regarded as 

 members of the same family, and may never, 

 under any circumstance, intermarry, under pain 

 of being driven out of the clan and hunted like 

 wild beasts. Sometimes individuals of antagonistic 

 tribes living at several hundred miles' distance from 

 one another and speaking different languages have 

 the same Kobong. The law of classes remains 

 active ; a captor may not violate a prisoner belong- 

 ing to his group, but a stranger may enter into 

 relations with the women of another tribe, so long 

 as the tribe belongs to a class related to his own. 

 This system of relationship can only be explained 

 as being a survival from a former period in which 

 all persons with the same Kdbong belonged to the 

 same group. This is a disputed point, 3 however, 



1 Fison and Howitt, Kurnai and Kamilaro'i (Journal of the 

 Anthropological Institute, 1884). 



2 "The Kobong of a man is the animal or plant, the name of 

 which he bears and reveres as a protecting spirit " (Starcke). 



3 Starcke, la Famille primitive (Bibl. sciens. intern., Paris, 

 F. Alcan, 1891, p. 22). 



