676 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION H. 



place between the village of the man for whom the ' War ' is made and that of 

 his mother. The ceremony is actuated by the belief that after death a man goes 

 to his mother's father. The same idea underlies another ceremony called 

 ' Pariparpar,' ' in which an image is made for a man by his mother's brother. 

 It is believed that the pigs killed on this occasion go to the maternal grand- 

 father of the man for whom the image is made and clear the track by which he 

 will pass when he dies. 



The mother's brother also takes the leading part in an indigenous ceremony 

 called 'Lengfa,' in which women buy the right to wear certain ornaments. 



At the present time the institutions of Ambrim are patrilineal. A man 

 belongs to his father's village, and in so far as individual property exists in this 

 island it is inherited by the children, while the social group which holds most 

 of the property in common is one which has in the main a patrilineal character. 

 The close relation with the mother's brother and the mother's people in the 

 indigenous ceremonies has no meaning in a patrilineal society, but would be the 

 natural accompaniment of ancient matrilineal conditions surviving in ceremonial. 



The ritual of death provides further evidence in this direction. The rites 

 following the death of a man are almost an exact replica of those performed 

 when he took his last step in the 'Mangge,' but with additional features in 

 which the village of the mother of the dead man is concerned. The intro- 

 duction of the ' Mangge ' and the incorporation of its ceremonial in the ritual 

 of death has not succeeded in abolishing those features of this ritual which 

 show the social relations of the dead man with his mother's village. Ambrim 

 adjoins a region characterised by matrilineal institutions. The fact that its 

 older stratum of ceremonial brings a man into relations with his mother's 

 people affords the most decisive proof that in this part of Melanesia the matri- 

 lineal institutions are the older and the patrilineal the more recent. 



2. Royal Marriages and Matrilineal Descents 

 By Miss Margaret A. Murray. 



At certain periods in the history of every nation inheritance was in the 

 female line. In royal families this custom appears to have continued to a later 

 date than among the mass of the people. In these cases the man who marries 

 the queen becomes king, and marriages within the modern degrees of affinity are 

 common. Such marriages, when recorded by contemporary chroniclers, are not 

 regarded as unusual, e.g., in Egypt in the XVlIIth dynasty and the early kings 

 of Judah. But when such consanguineous marriages are recorded by foreign 

 observers or later historians, as among the Ptolemies and the early Roman 

 emperors, they are ascribed to vicious propensities instead of to the stern 

 political necessity to which they are really due, and which the non-contemporary 

 or foreign historian failed to understand. 



3. The System of Kinship among Primitive Races in connection with 

 their mode of grouping. By Mile. Nadinr Ivanitzky, Attachfe 

 scientifique a I'Institut Solvay a Bruxelles. 



(a) All manifestations of the social life of primitive races being in strict 

 correlation with the concrete necessities of life, the elements of their social 

 organisation are with difficulty separated from each other. This brings it about 

 that, when we study one special aspect of their life, we must always return to 

 the social complex which supports this special aspect. 



_ " TEe sound for which I use the sign ri does not differ greatly from a. and 

 might easily be confused with it. 

 ' To be published in Man. 



