394 



NATURE 



[August 27, 1908 



which he has sent heme, Dr. Rivers proves that his 

 hypothesis was justified. He says, " The Hawaiians 

 have lost nearly the whole of their old culture, and 

 present from the point of view of the anthropologist 

 a most depres'-mg- picture of the results of a century 

 of contact with civilisation, and yet in the midst of 

 the general wreckage there has persisted almost 

 untouched the old system of kinship, which, so far as 

 we can tell, is as il was fifty or a hundred years ago." 

 The Niue (Savage I.) system was found to resemble 

 closely that of the Hawaiian Islands. A short visit to 

 Nukualofa enabled Dr. Rivers to record the Tongan 

 system of kinship, which proved to be the representa- 

 tive of a stage in the process of transition in which 

 certain distinctions, lost elsewhere in Polynesia, have 

 been preserved. The Samoan kinship system proved 

 to be anomalous, and falls much less into line with 

 our knowledge of the mode of expressing relation- 

 ships found elsewhere in Polynesia. The " godless 

 Samoans," it will be remembered, differed in other 

 respects from typical Polynesians ; their Government 

 was more patriarchal and democratic than mon- 

 archical ; the village communities were quite inde- 

 pendent and could dispossess their chiefs ; there were 

 no temples, altars, or offerings ; there was a family 

 cult of the animal god ; in addition each individual has 

 his tutelary god, as had the village. 



Dr. Rivers spent nearly a month in Fiji, most of 

 which time was devoted to the interior of Viti Levu ; 

 there he found an entirely new system of kinship of 

 the most complicated and interesting kind, and quite 

 different from the system previously recorded as the 

 Fijian system ; the latter is in vogue in the district 

 dominated by Bau, though, so far as he could ascer- 

 tain, it, with many minor modifications, is used by 

 coast people generally. He elucidated the systems of 

 some ten different tribes, showing variations of the 

 two Fijian systems. It is rather surprising that such 

 very considerable variations may exist in the kinship 

 systems of people living close to one another, and 

 differing in no way in general racial characters. Dr. 

 Rivers is of opinion that the relationship terms of the 

 mountain tribes must have had their origin in status 

 relations rather than in those of kinship, and he 

 suggests a comparison with the system of the Dieri 

 of Australia. 



Through the kindness of Bishop Wilson, Dr. Rivers 

 was given a passage on the Southern Cross of the 

 Melanesian Mission on her rounds from Auckland to 

 the Solomon Islands. This enabled him to interview 

 a large number of natives of various islands. He 

 worked out fairly thoroughly the system of Raga 

 (.Aiag, or Pentecost), which is by far the most com- 

 plex one he has ever met or heard of; in fact, all the 

 systems of the southern New Hebrides are so complex 

 that he has come to look on such systems as those of 

 Torres Straits as child's-play. The chief feature of 

 the Raga system is that the same terms are used for 

 certain grandparents and for certain relationships by 

 marriage, while the mother's mother is called by the 

 same name as an elder sister, just as in the inland 

 systems of Fiji the father's father has the same name 

 as the elder brother. A native of another island (who 

 found it very amusing) told Dr. Rivers that the Raga 

 people used to marry their granddaughters, and 

 indeed he found that it used to be the custom in Raga 

 for a man to marry the daughter of his brother's 

 daughter. The Raga system also presents another 

 set of complexities, v,'hich it shares with the system 

 of Mota, one which puts the children of brother and 

 sister in the relationship of parent and child. These 

 features are all referable to the principle given by 

 Codrington, which puts the sister's son on the same 

 level as the uncle. 



NO. 2026, VOL. 78] 



In the Solomon Islands, Dr. Rivers has obtained, 

 so far, seven systems, which are all extremely simple 

 in their general features, and he feels certain that 

 they are really simplified and stand in much the same 

 kind of relation to those further south, as the coast 

 systems of Fiji stand to those of the interior. The 

 three systems of Ngela, Bogotu, and northern 

 Guadalcanar are on the same general lines, and many 

 of the terms are exactly the same, and used in the 

 same way, as those of the Bau system of Fiji. Those 

 of Ulawa and Saa are of the most extraordinary sim- 

 plicity, almost Polynesian in this respect. The whole 

 set of systems seems to him to furnish beautiful 

 evidence of the progressive simplification of kinship 

 systems which accompanies progress in general cul- 

 ture. In every case Dr. Rivers has obtained a large 

 body of evidence on kinship duties and taboos, &c., 

 or their absence, all showing that the simplification 

 of kinship systems goes with the disappearance of 

 these duties and taboos. He has also obtained 

 abundant evidence to show that the maternal descent 

 in Melanesia does not in anj' way e.xclude a verv 

 thorough recognition of kinship through the father. 

 All this work has been accomplished by the genea- 

 logical method, without which he could have done 

 nothing in the time to which he would have attached 

 any value. 



The foregoing account will give an idea of some 

 of the work already accomplished by Dr. Rivers ; 

 amongst other important results, not here alluded to, 

 is a description of totemism in Fiji, which will be pub- 

 lished in the September number of Man. In his last 

 letter from Tulagi, dated May S, Dr. Rivers was 

 about to settle down in a definite district, probably 

 in Rubiana, where he will make an exhaustive study 

 of the natives, assisted bv Dr. A. M. Hocart, of 

 Exeter College, Oxford, and Mr. G. C. Wheeler, 

 Martin White Student of the University of London, 

 who had already joined him. A. C. Haddon. 



THE PRESERVATION OF WELL-ESTAB- 

 LISHED NAMES IN ZOOLOGICAL 

 NOMENCLATURE. 



A S was announced in Nature of July 30, a dis- 

 -'*- cussion will take place in Section D of the 

 British Association on the abuses resulting from the 

 strict application of the rule of priority in zoological 

 nomenclature and on the means of protecting well- 

 established names. 



Much inconvenience is caused by the extreme ap- 

 plication of the rule of priority, the worst feature 

 of which is not so much the bestowal of unknown 

 names on well-known creatures as the transfer of 

 names from one to another, as we have 

 seen in the case of Astacus, Torpedo, Holo- 

 thuria, Simla, Cynocephalus, and many others 

 which must be present to the mind of every 

 systematist. Yet these changes are proposed in order 

 to comply with so-called laws enacted by various 

 committees that have dealt with the subject of nomen- 

 clature within the last few years. Many zoologists 

 think it is time to protest against the evil resulting 

 from the indiscriminate application of what would 

 be an excellent rule if tempered by a little considera- 

 tion for tradition. Botanists at the Vienna Congress 

 of 1905 have considered the same subject as regards 

 the generic names of plants, and decided not to 

 change such as have been universally used. 



In anticipation of the discussion that is to take 

 place at Dublin, the following memorandum has been 

 circulated among British zoologists, and the signa- 

 tures which are appended to it show that strict ad- 



