NA TURE 



[April 21, 1 88 1 



head that the Kamilaroi were divided by their names into 

 castes with the marriage law which Mr. Ridley first 

 described, and, meeting with an ipai whose wife was an 

 ipata, he regarded him as a daring transgressor of the 

 customary rule. The man told him that he and his wife 

 were free to marry because they were not of the same 

 mudji (totem) ; and, thereupon, Mr. Lance (who evidently 

 had never before heard of totems) told Mr. Ridley that 

 the ipai were privileged above their neighbours in being 

 free to marry women of their own class who were not of 

 the same family with them ; and Mr. Ridley told the 

 world that they were the aristocratic caste among the 

 Kamilaroi. (He has since stated that the murri are the 

 aristocratic class.) This is the sort of observation we 

 are questioning. Had Mr. Lance seen in operation a 

 rule intended to prevent, say a man from marrying his 

 own diughter, he might easily have magnified it into a 

 rule prohibiting two whole "castes" from marrying. 

 And in all probability it was something like this he 

 did. It is the ludicrously wrong impression he had 

 before he met the ipai aforesaid that Mr. Fison has 

 taken for the basis of his hypothesis — but from even that 

 to the hypothesis is a tremendous jump. And, after all, 

 ei^en if we overlook the inadmissible assumption which 

 fonns an essential part of the hypothesis, it appears not 

 to be good for anything. 



What have been called caste or class names appear, so 

 far as the evidence goes at present, to be names merely, 

 and to have no effect on the right of intermarriage. The 

 system of naming is certainly very peculiar. The names 

 alternate in successive generations. That is not in itself 

 peculiar ; but the same name is taken by all the sons, the 

 same name by all the daughters. Thus ipata' s children 

 are the sons all kumbo, and the daughters all butha ; and, 

 again, butha's children are ipai and ipata. It is a 

 pretty widely spread system. Mr. Howitt says that, as 

 far as he knows, it prevails among all Austrahan tribes ; 

 but this is going a vast deal too far ; and is calculated to 

 undeimiine faith in Mr. Howitt's judgment, for it plainly 

 does not prevail among the Kurnai whom he himself has 

 described. His report shows nothing like castes or 

 classes among them ; the men, he says, are all called 

 yeerung (emu-wren) by the women, and the women all 

 djeetgun (superb- warbler) by the men , but this (whatever 

 it may mean, and it may mean very little) does not divide 

 the Kurnai into anything other than men and women. Mr. 

 Fison has had from a number of coiTespondents state- 

 ments which he takes to mean that among tribes other 

 than the Kamilaroi which have this system of naming, 

 there is no marriage between persons of the same name; 

 but his correspondents are neither, as regards opportunity 

 or observing power, above Mr. Lance ; and Mr. Ridley's 

 study of the Kamilaroi, imperfect as it has been, gives 

 the only evidence that can be regarded as trustworthy. 

 Mr. Fison has amended the list of marriages allowed 

 among the Kamilaroi, given by Mr. Ridley, as he says, 

 on later information ; but anonymous information cannot 

 be thought of much value on this matter as against the 

 authority of Mr. Ridley. Mr. Fison is too easily satisfied 

 with anything that seems to make for his view to be 

 indl" trusted in such a matter. We find him inferring 

 from ihere being no marriage between blood-relations — 

 which may mean totem clans — among people who have 

 the class names thai there is no marriage within the class. 

 We find totem clans, too, reported to him as classes and 

 ranked by him as classes ; and "divisions," which probably 

 mean totem clans, are also ranked by him as classes. On 

 the other hand he candidly gives at least one case in which 

 the class-names are said not to restrict marriage. He gives 

 at the very beginning of his book a native legend of brothers 

 and sisters having married at the first — a legend which both 

 Mr. Morgan and he make much of. We are surprised, 

 however, at his missing the true point of it. What it 

 exhibits is not a movement to " intermarrying divisions " 



or classes, but to the establishment of totem clans. 

 These are all the natives seem to have thought in need of 

 explanation. 



We should have been glad to notice Mr. Howitt's 

 account of the Kurnai at some length, but we must be 

 brief. The Kurnai have kinship through males and exo- 

 gamy—that is, prohibition of n-arriage within the kindred; 

 and as was to be expected in such a case, the kindreds 

 form local tribes. He does not expressly tell us whether 

 or not these clans or local tribes are distinguished by 

 totems (which shows that he meant to be careful, and that 

 his information was very far from being complete), but 

 incidentally he lets out that they are. When a Kurnai 

 young woman meets a )-oung fellow who, being a stranger, 

 looks as if he might make a husband for her. Do you 

 eat kangaroo, opossum, blacksnake.' is her first question 

 after saluting him. Presumably the animal she names is 

 her own totem. If the stranger may eat it he can marry 

 her. As for his discovery of marriage by elopement, we 

 have no doubt that it is (as a missionary friend of his, Mr. 

 Bulmer, hinted to him it must be) a mere product of 

 misconception. Young men among the Kurnai, he says, 

 could get wives only by eloping with them on the proposal 

 of the women. This may be ; an Australian young man 

 could scarcely ever get a' wife except by running away 

 with her. But how did the elderly men get their wives ? 

 He appears never to have asked that. But he is aware 

 that there was a system of exchanges. The Kurnai are 

 polygamous, and no doubt among them, as among other 

 Australians, the elderly men had, by means of exchanges, 

 nearly all the young women for wives. Mr. Howitt 

 writes so candidly, and his account of the Kurnai is in 

 many respects so interesting, that we should gladly have 

 brought ourselves to think better of this discovery of his. 

 But after reading Mr. Fison's most amazing account of the 

 origin of marriage by elopement, we find ourselves shut up 

 to holding that it is simply a big blunder. Nothing else 

 could have elicited so preposterous an explanation. But 

 such words as preposterous fall harshly on the ear, and 

 we would part from our authors without unkindness. 

 Their exertions to advance a growing science are truly 

 commendable. If the result has been rather to mystify 

 than to elucidate, there is but one more illustration of the 

 way in which good intentions, industry, and ingenuity 

 are wasted when men have started in the wrong track. 



D. MacLennan 



NOTES 



The evening discourses at the meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion at York will be delivered by Prof. Huxley and Mr. Spottis- 

 woode. Mr. Huxley will speak of the " Rise and Progress of 

 Paleontology " on Friday, September 2, and Mr. Spottiswoode 

 " On the Electric Discharge, its Forms and its Functions," on 

 Monday, September 5. 



The HonoraryTellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons 

 in Ireland was on Wednesday last week conferred on Prof. 

 Helmholtz, and the Honorary Degree of LL.D. by the University 

 of Dublin. On Monday niglit, at an ordinary meetin'^ of the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh, .Sir William Thomson in the chair, 

 Prof. Helmholtz read a paper on " Electrolytic Conduction." 

 There was a crowded attendance, and Prof. Helmholtz was 

 warmly received. 



On Monday the National Fisheries Exhibition, which has 

 been organised at Norwich under the care of numerous public 

 bodies, from the Board of Trade downwards, was opened by the 

 Prince and Princess of Wales. The exhibition is divided into 

 six classes, as follows : — i. Pisciculture and shell-fish culture; 

 2. Models, trawling gear, drifting gear, canvas and rope>, and 

 inland fishing tackle ; 3. Life-saving apparatus, lamps, fog-horns, 

 signalling, &c., architectural plans for fish markets, fish-curing 



