320 
NATURE 
[May 20, 1915 


is a clear tradition of its occurrence in the past, 
and it is said still to be practised. This form of 
marriage also takes place among the Dieri of 
Australia, who recognise that relatives belonging 
to generations twice removed from one another | 
are naturally husband and wife (ii., p. 47). Dr. 
Rivers will be interested to learn that Sarat 
Chandra Roy, in his forthcoming book on the | 
Oraons of Chota Nagpur, will produce evidence to | 
show that there are “reasons for inferring the | 
former existence amongst the Oraons (before clan 
exogamy was instituted) of a system of marriage 
or union between persons related to each other | 
as grandparent (or grand-uncle or grand-aunt) | 
and grandchild (or grand-nephew or grand-niece).”” | 
These archaic social institutions may be preserved | 
in nomenclature like flies in amber. Dr. Rivers | 
argues that the anomalous forms of marriage | 
| 
imply a dual organisation with matrilineal | 
descent, and he is driven to assume a state of | 

Fic. 2.—Canoe and canoe-shed, Tikopia. 
society in which the elders had acquired so pre- 
dominant a position that they were able to mono- 
polise all the young women. He also points out 
that, according to this view, cross-cousin marriage 
arose as a modification of the marriage with the 
wife of the mother’s brother. 
Dr. Rivers has made a special study of the 
secret societies of Melanesia, and he works out 
an elaborate argument to show that the secret 
ceremonial is derived from rites brought by an 
immigrant people, relatively few in number, who 
were solely of the male sex, or accompanied by 
very few women of their own race. By con- 
sidering the distribution and the customs and 
objects associated with betel-chewing and kava- 
drinking, he shows that these comestibles mark 
two main migrations into Melanesia, which 
previously was inhabited by a people with a dual 
organisation. Various methods of the disposal 
From “ The History of Melanesian Society.” 

of the dead indicate racial complexity, and a study 
NO. 2377, VOL. 95| 
of each mode combined with associated data leads 
to a finer analysis. His conclusions may be sum- 
marised as follows :— 
The introduction of betel-chewing was relatively 
late and restricted and may have taken place from 
Indonesia after the invasion of the Hindus. With 
it were associated marriage with the wife of the 
father’s brother, the special sanctity of the skull, 
and the plank-built canoe. 
The effect of the kava-using peoples was more 
extensive in time and space; they had neither 
clan organisation nor exogamy, some preserved 
the body, and respect was paid to the head or 
skull. Contact with the earlier populations re- 
sulted in wife purchase and the development of 
secret societies. They introduced the cult of the 
dead and the institutions of taboo, totemism, and 
chieftainship, an outrigger canoe, money, the 
slit drum or gong, the conch trumpet, megalithic 
monuments, and the fowl, pig, and dog. There 
may have been two immigrations 
of peoples who made monuments 
of stone. (1) Those who erected 
the more dolmen-like structures, 
probably had aquatic totems, and 
interred their dead in the ex- 
tended position; (2) and later, 
those whose’ stone structures 
tended to take the form of pyra- 
mids, who had bird totems, prac- 
tised’ a ‘cults Yor the™ sunvmand 
cremated their dead. 
These immigrants found a people 
divided into two exogamous 
groups, with matrilineal descent, 
and three special forms of mar- 
riage (with daughter’s daughter, 
wife of mother’s brother, and wife 
of father’s father), they had recti- 
linear decorative designs, and em- 
ployed the bullroarer. The dual 
organisation seems to have been 
formed by fusion rather than by 
fission, judging from the frequent 
survival of hostility between the 
two moieties, their mythology, character, and pos- 
sibly even slight traces of differences in physique. 
Whatever the previous social condition of each 
moiety, a fusion of two races under certain con- 
ditions might produce matrilineal descent. The 
dual organisation would thus imply a dual origin, 
of which the immigrant people spoke an Austro- 
nesian language (as did the kava and _ betel 
peoples), interred their dead in a sitting position, 
feared the dead, believed in spirits, practised 
circumcision, introduced the bow and arrow, and 
an outrigger canoe. The Baining of New Britain 
may represent, though, of course, in a modified 
form, the aboriginal elements of the dual people; 
they are devoid of any fear of the dead, and 
their small stature suggests that the pre-dual 
people may have been pygmies. 
Dr. Rivers has produced a work which will 
have far-reaching results, it being not merely a 
storehouse of facts, but a demonstration of 




