S44 EEPOET— 1888. 



4. Descent through the mother makes the close relation of sister's son and 

 mother's brother ; the son takes his mother's place in the family pedigree. Certain 

 ■rights of the sister's son with his uncle. The mother is in no sense head of the 

 family. The bridegroom takes his bride into his fathers house, if not into his 

 •own. 



5. A certain practice of couvade prevails. 



6. No capture in marriage. Adoption of no importance. 



(b) 1. In Florida, in the Solomon Islands, and the neighbourhood, is found an 

 •example of four or six divisions, called kenia. In strict exogamy, descent follow- 

 ing the mother, and local and political intermixture, aU is the same as in the 

 Banks' Islands. But each kema has its name, and each has its buto, that which 

 the members of it must abstain from. The names are some local, some taken from 

 living creatures. The buto is mostly something that must not he eaten. 



2. Question whether totems are present. The bird which giving its name to 

 one kema is not the biito of it, can be eaten. Comparison from the Island of 

 Ulawa. 



3. Exceptional condition of part of Malanta and San Cristoval, in the apparent 

 absence of exogamous divisions of the people, and in descent being counted through 

 the father. 



II. Peopektt and Stjccession. 



A. 1. Land is everywhere divided into (1) the Town ; (2) the Gardens ; 

 (3) the Bush. Of these, the two first are held in property, the third is unappro- 

 priated. 



2. Land is not held in common — i.e., each individual knows his own ; yet it is 

 rather possession and use for the time of what belongs to the family, and not to the 

 individual. A chief has no more property in the land than any other man. Sale 

 of land -was very rare before Europeans came ; and sale of land by a chief beyond 

 his own piece, no true sale. Example at Saa of the fixed native right of property 

 in laud. Abundance makes land of little value. 



3. Land reclaimed from the bush by an individual, and the site of a town 

 founded on the garden ground of an individual, has a character of its own. 



4. Fruit trees planted by one man on another's land, remain the property of 

 the planter and his heirs. In a true sale the accurate and particular knowledge of 

 property in land and trees is remarkably shown. 



5. Personal property is in money, pigs, canoes, ornaments, &c.' 



B. \. The regular succession to property is that by which it passes to the 

 sister's son, or to others who are of kin through the mother. 



2. But that which a man has acquired for himself he may leave to his sons, 

 or his sons and their heirs may claim. This is the source of many quarrels, the 

 character of a piece of land being forgotten, or disputed by the father's kin. 



3. Hence a tendency to succession to the father's property by his sons follows 

 the assertion of paternity, and the occupation of new ground. 



4. A man's kin still hold a claim on his personal property, but his sons, who 

 are not his kin, will generally obtain it. 



6. Oil the Funeral Sites and Ceremonies of the Nicohar Islanders. 



By E. H. Man. 



The author, who during a residence of many years in the Nicobar Islands 

 has made a careful study of the habits and customs of the aboriginal inhabitants as 

 well as of their language, forwards a paper treating in detail of the Nicobarese 

 funeral rites and ceremonies. 



The mortuary customs in the central and southern islands difler in many points 

 from those observed by the communities inhabiting the northern portions of the 

 Archipelago : all alike appear to indulge in demonstrations of grief, which amount 

 to almost frenzied extravagance, and which are induced in the majority of mourners 

 less by real sorrow than by the dread entertained of, and desire of conciliating the 



