Kinship. 163 



land among the agricultural. In the Communal Family, all 

 property must have belonged to the common stock. The 

 first division, by limiting the number of owners, introduced 

 a new idea, which tended ceaselessly to still further limita- 

 tion, and finally under the guidance of the law of the 

 stronger culminated in polygamy, the highest form of 

 intersexual law yet discovered among savage nations. Not 

 until this stage had been reached, could there be trans- 

 mission by inheritance of either property or rank. 

 Consequently, we may perhaps infer that the Melanesians, 

 who have no hereditary chiefs, are nearer to the Malay 

 system than the Polynesians, who have both castes and 

 chiefs by descent. 



In some cases, the smaller tribes or subdivisions are 

 distinguished by the names of certain animals, as wolf, bear, 

 elk, tortoise, and so forth, among the North American 

 Indians; and kangaroo, opossum, blacksnake, emu, bandicoot, 

 &;c., among the Australian Aborigines. It is a singular 

 fact that, as far as I have been able to ascertain, tribes thus 

 distinguished by totems or animal names, have for their 

 system of kinship the Ganowanian, as distinguished from the 

 Turanian, i.e., they remove the boys from the tribe, and not 

 the girls ; whence, the son is of the mother's tribe, not of 

 the father's. He does not inherit the father's rank or 

 property. These are given to the father's sister's son. 

 Thus, an American Indian does not inherit even his father's 

 scalps, his weapons of war, or his medal. • He goes forth 

 from his tribe into that whence his father came ; and from a 

 passage in Dr. Livingstone's expedition to the Zambesi, we 

 may conclude with certainty tliat this custom, and 

 consequently the cause of the custom, prevail among some 

 at least of the Central African tribes. 



My researches among the Australian Aborigines have 

 revealed a curious and novel classification, resulting in a 

 system of kinship which seems to be intermediate between 

 the Malayan and the Ganowanian. We are, however, 

 not yet quite clear as to the precise form which it will 

 take. 



During my stay in Sydney last year, I became acquainted 

 with the Rev. W. Ridley, M.A., a Presbyterian clergyman, 

 who was for some years a missionary to the blacks, and who 

 has a knowledge of the language of the tribes among whom 

 he laboured. From him I learned that the Kamilaroi 

 speaking tribes are divided into four classes, by means of 



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