624 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
The following Papers were then read :— 
1. On the Relative Age of the Tribes with Patrilineal and Matrilineal 
Descent in South-East Australia. By Prof. W. J. Souuas, F.R.S. 
If, as appears probable, Tasmania was peopled by immigration from Aus- 
tralia, and Australia by immigration from New Guinea, we should expect to 
find traces of the more primitive people, if they survive anywhere, in the south 
rather than in the north of the continent. An examination of the available 
evidence seems to show that this expectation is satisfied by the facts. In 
material culture there is not much which is distinctive of the south, yet it is 
important to note that the canoes of the south-east are made in a more primi- 
tive manner than those in the north, the bark of which they are formed being 
merely bent into shape and not sawn; in the south-west canoes are unknown, 
rafts taking their place. On the intellectual and religious side greater differ- 
ences are manifest. ‘Totemism, which flourishes so luxuriantly over the rest of 
Australia, falls almost into abeyance in the extreme south, and though this may 
be partly explained by disuse, yet there is nothing to show that totemism had 
ever attained so great a hold upon the people of Victoria and the adjacent 
part of South Australia as it has elsewhere.* 
The distribution of the rite of circumcision throws very little light on this 
question; it is limited to a wide median band which extends from the northern 
to the southern coast; it seems to have invaded the country from the north, 
and to have spread by a kind of missionary propaganda. 
Among the Kurnai of Gippsland the initiatory ceremonies are simpler than 
elsewhere, and the knocking out of teeth forms no part of them. In contrast 
to the Dieri, these people have no gesture language, and their message sticks 
are the most primitive yet met with. 
More important evidence, however, is afforded by language, and Father 
Schmidt has shown that the language of the Kurnai and the other languages 
of Victoria allied to it show a closer approach to Tasmanian than is made by 
any other Australian tongue. 
Equally strong evidence in the same direction may be obtained from a 
study of bodily characters. Platycephaly, a character generally regarded as 
primitive, increases as we proceed from north to south; thus, in Queensland 
only 3 per cent. of the skulls examined are platycephalic; in New South 
Wales, 33 per cent.; in Victoria, 46 per cent.; and in the south of South 
Australia, no less than 76 per cent.; in Tasmania the proportion is 75 per cent. 
Howitt remarks that ‘in a district like Gippsland, cut off by . . . physical 
features . . . from facile intercourse with the remainder of Australia, we 
should naturally expect to find the social condition of the people “ old- 
fashioned,” ’ and then proceeds to assert that this is by no means the case; basing 
this statement on the absence of the class system and the existence, not of 
matrilineal, but patrilineal descent. This, of course, involves the assumption 
that the class system and matrilineal descent are the more primitive. As a 
universal rule I do not think this will hold, nor do I think it holds for the 
Kurnai. The primitive character of this people is established by a consider- 
able body of evidence, which is, on the whole, of a more positive character 
than that which is afforded by their social organisation. Among the East 
Kulin people, also characterised by patrilineal descent and local exogamy, we 
have, further, a local separation into Kagle-hawks and Crows, distinguished by 
different dialects and different bodily characters—a fact suggestive of the 
origin of the class system in the alliance of different races. It would seem 
that the Arunta are among the least primitive of the Australian races. 
* In Tasmania the only evidence for the existence of totemism rests on the 
statement that some natives would eat only the male wallaby, others only the 
female. 
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