PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 4!)3 



began my theoretical study by a comparison of the various forms of these sys- 

 tems of relationship, disregarding at first the linguistic nature of the terms. 

 From the study of these systems I was able to demonstrate the existence either 

 in the present or the past of a number of extraordinary and anomalous forms 

 of marriage, such as marriage with the daughter's daughter and with the wife 

 of the father's father, 8 all of which become explicable if there once existed widely 

 throughout Melanesia a state which is known as the dual organisation of society 

 with matrilineal descent accompanied by a condition of dominance of the old 

 men which enabled them to monopolise all the young women of the community. 

 Taking this as my starting-point, I was then able to trace out a consistent and 

 definite scheme of the history of marriage in Melanesia from a condition in which 

 persons normally and naturally married certain relatives to one in which wives 

 are purchased with whom no relationship whatever can be traced, and I was 

 able to fit many other features of the social structure of Melanesia into this 

 scheme. So far my work was of a purely evolutionary character, and only 

 served to strengthen me in my previous standpoint. 



I then turned my attention to the linguistic side of the systems of relation- 

 ship, and a study of the terms themselves showed that these fell into two main 

 classes : one class generally diffused throughout Oceania, while the terms of the 

 other class differed very considerably in different cultural regions. Further, it 

 became clear that the terms of the first class denoted relationships which my 

 comparative study of the forms of the systems had shown to have suffered 

 change, while the terms which varied greatly in different parts of Oceania de- 

 noted relationships, such as those of the mother and mother's brother, which there 

 was no reason to believe had suffered any great change in status. From these facts 

 I inferred that at the time of the most primitive stage of Melanesian society 

 of which I had evidence, there had been great linguistic diversity which had 

 been transformed into the relative uniformity now found in Melanesia by the 

 incoming of a people from without, through whose influence the change I had 

 traced had taken place, and from whose language the generally diffused terms 

 of relationship had been borrowed. It was through the combined study of social 

 forms and of language that I was led to see that the change I had traced was 

 not a spontaneous evolution, but one which had taken place under the influence 

 of the blending of peoples. The combined morphological and linguistic study of 

 systems of relationship had led me to recognise that a definite course of social 

 development had taken place in an aboriginal society under the influence of an 

 immigrant people. 



I turned next to a Melanesian institution, that of secret societies, con- 

 cerning which I had been able to gather much new material, and it soon 

 became probable that these, societies belonged properly neither to the aboriginal 

 culture nor to that of the immigrants, but had arisen as the result of the inter- 

 action of the two ; that, in fact, these secret societies had had their source in 

 the need felt by the immigrants for the secret practice of the rites they had 

 brought with them from their former home. A comparison of the ritual of the 

 secret societies with the institutions of other parts of Oceania then made it 

 appear that the main features of the culture of these immigrants had been patri- 

 lineal descent, or at any rate definite recognition of the relation between father 

 and child, a cult of the dead, the institution of taboo, and, lastly, certain relations 

 with animals and plants which were probably allied to toteminn, if they were 

 not totemism itself in a fully developed form. 



Further study made it clear that those I have called the immigrant people, 

 though possessing these features in common, had reached Melanesia at different 

 times and with several decided differences of culture, but that probably there 

 had been two main streams : one which peopled Polynesia and became widely 

 diffused throughout Melanesia, which was characterised by the use of kava ; 

 another which came later and penetrated much less widely, which brought with 

 it the practice of chewing betel-mixture. Traces of a third stream, the earliest 

 of all, are probably to be found here and there throughout Melanesia, while 

 still another element is provided by recent Polynesian influence. It became 

 evident that the present condition of Melanesian society has come into being 

 fhrough the blending of an aboriginal population with various peoples from 



" These terms are used in the classificatorv sense. 



