April 2 1, 1881] 



NA TURE 



587 



terms, we can scarcely pretend to follow them. The 

 terms which are specially Turanian are laid down by him 

 in definitions, and these definitions are used in the 

 demonstrations— so that, so far as these terms are con- 

 cerned, he seems to assume what he is going to prove. 

 On p. 87 (Prop. 12) he proves that certain groups are 

 cousins by the mere statement of three definitions. What 

 is also odd is that, immediately after, he proves, by a 

 process of reasoning, that the same groups are not 

 cousins, but brothers and sisters-in-law. Similarly, he 

 proves first that a group is another group' s nephew, and 

 then that it is its son-in-law. This brings us to say that 

 the terms which Mr. Morgan has translated uncle, aunt, 

 nephew, niece, and cousin, and which he regards as de- 

 noting relationships, according to Mr. Fison really mean 

 father and mother-in-law, and brother and sister-in-law 

 only, and express nothing except that a person is called 

 father or mother, brother or sister, as the case may be, by 

 a man or woman whom one is free to marry. How these 

 could, with group marriage, be more than terms of 

 address it puzzles us to see. What it is necessary to 

 notice in these demonstrations, however— and nothing 

 else is really necessary— is that while by hypothesis 

 descent is reckoned through the mother— which must 

 show that relationship had to some extent been the sub- 

 ject of thought — and "so far as descent is concerned, the 

 father is a mere nonentity," they all proceed on the view 

 that the father, who on the hypothesis would be in each 

 particular case unknown, is as much a relative as the 

 mother. Having said this, no more need be said of Mr. 

 Fison's demonstrations. It should be added, however, 

 that the terms in use among relatives in Australia are, so 

 far as Mr. Fison can learn, in the main Malayan — and he 

 has no theory to account for the Malayan terms. He 

 knows nothing at all of the terms in use among the 

 Kamilaroi. He has himself found the native terms 

 " exasperatingly puzzling." Several terms may be used 

 by the same people for one relationship, and, as he says, 

 matters other than relationship appear to be taken into 

 account. The ceremony of initiation, for example, affects 

 the words by which a man will designate another, though, 

 as Mr. Fison says, it "does not touch their relationship." 

 As to the hypothesis itself, an essential part of it (and 

 indeed of Mr. Morgan's hypotheses too) is that, as regards 

 the intercourse of the sexes, there should have been no 

 mixing of generations — that only men and women of the 

 same generation should have been husbands and wives. 

 A generation, apart' from particular families, can be 

 defined only loosely, but for Mr. Fison's purposes it 

 should be definable with some precision. At any rate, 

 his theory requires that the elderly men should have been 

 kept separate from the young women, and the )oung men 

 from the old women. But what an assumption this is — 

 especially to make primarily of Australian natives, of 

 whom nothing is better known than that the elderly men 

 monopolise the women, and especially the young ones, 

 and that a young man (though much license is allowed) 

 hardly ever gets a wife, unless it be an old one, except 

 by running away with her. This assumption, experience 

 being dead against it, is of itself enough to put out of the 

 field the hypothesis of which it forms a part. The idea 

 of intermarrying divisions with groups of husbands all 

 brothers, and groups of wives all sisters, no doubt sprang 

 out of the hypotheses of Mr. Morgan, but apart from Mr. 

 Morgan, it has a history which must be told. Briefly, it 

 was suggested by a traveller's mistake. 



In 1S53 the Rev. William Ridley, a Presbyterian 

 clergyman of Sydney, published a statement as to the 

 marriage rules of the Kamilaroi, which statement is now 

 known, on Mr. Ridley's own authority, to have been 

 essentially erroneous. Mr. Fison still treats it as entirely 

 true, and treats all later and more correct information as 

 if it gave facts of a later order. Mr. Ridley said that the 

 Kamilaroi were divided into four castes of men and 



four of women, and that (with one exception) the men 

 of a caste could marry only women of one other caste. 

 Murri, feminine mata ; kubbi, feminine kubbitha ; kumbo, 

 feminine butha; and ipai, feminine ipata, were the 

 castes ; and he said that a murri could marry a butha 

 and no other woman, and that his children were not 

 murri and butha, but ipai and ipata; and that, simi- 

 larly, a kubbi could marry only an ipata, his children 

 being kuntbo and butha ; and a kumbo only a mata, his 

 children being kubbi and kubbitha ; while an ipai, besides 

 being free to marry any kubbitha, could marry any ipata 

 not of his own family— his children, when he married a 

 kubbitha, being murri and mata, and when he married an 

 ipata, kumbo and butha. Mr. Ridley repeated this 

 statement without change in 1S55, and he told it in 1871 

 to Mr. Fison with this amount of change, that instead of 

 castes he now spoke of classes (in unhappy imitation of 

 Mr. Morgan), and of four classes, with men and women 

 in each, instead of four classes of men and four of women ; 

 and that he described the marriage of ipai with ipata 

 (that is with a woman of his own class) as an infringe- 

 ment of rule -changes that may fairly be ascribed to the 

 initiative of Mr. Fison. Mr. Fison, putting aside the 

 marriage of ipai with a woman of his own class as an 

 irregularity, and idealising Mr. Ridley's statement, at 

 once formed the hvpothesis that all the men of one class 

 originally were by birth the husbands of all the women of 

 the same generation in the class with which they might 

 intermarry. This, although he knew from Mr. Ridley 

 that polygamy was largely practised among the Kamilaroi. 

 Much licence was allowed ; and the only word for spouse 

 signified a person whom one is free to marry ; and these 

 two facts seemed to him to override Kamilaroi practice, and 

 to prove that marriage had been communal, to begin. 

 In the same year (1871), however, Mr. Ridley was again 

 among the Kamilaroi, and sent to Mr. Fison a statement 

 which should have shaken his faith in his hypothesis— 

 both because of the new matter it contained, and because 

 there were in it what he himself perceived to be errors of 

 observation. Mr. Ridley has published several state- 

 ments since, all containing obvious errors of observation 

 or slips of memory, and it is impossible to receive even 

 his latest statement as final. But observe what his latest 

 statement is, and compare it with Mr. Fison's hypothesis. 

 It is that the Kamilaroi are divided into totem clans 

 (iguanas, paddy-melons, opossums, emus, blacksnakes, 

 bandicoots) ; that every native has three names— a per- 

 sonal name (carefully concealed), a " class " name, and a 

 totem name ; that children take both the class name and 

 the totem name through the mother ; that the men and 

 women of every class are free to marry one another, 

 provided they are not of the same totem— and that, 

 besides, murri may marry any butha, kubbi any ipata, 

 kumbo anv mata, and ipai any kubbitha. If his 

 statements 'can be trusted, murri and butha, kubbi and 

 ipata, kumbo and mata, and ipai and kubbitha, who 

 are free to marry one another, are never of the same 

 totem— so that all the marriages which certainly are 

 permitted are marriages between persons of different 

 totems. Mr. Ridley still leaves each class restricted from 

 intermarrying with two others. So much of his original 

 statement he has not yet found to be wrong. But the class 

 name does not prevent marriage within the class. The 

 notion that the Kamilaroi were in intermarrying or husband 

 and wife "castes" was certainly erroneous. Is it likely 

 then that the class-name is any bar to marriage outside the 

 class ? Is it not far more likely that there is still some- 

 thing for Mr. Ridley or some other inquirer to find out, 

 and that, in the main, identity of totem is the only bar to 

 marriage? We say in the main, because it is very likely 

 that there are also regulations to prevent marriage 

 between persons near in blood who are of different totems. 

 Mr. Lance, who is a great authority with Mr. Fison, and 

 who was Mr. Ridley's first informant, had got into his 



