102 ON THE ORGANISATION OF AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 
_ Thus we find that the tribe is divided and again subdivided according to locality, 
just as the community is divided and subdivided into what has been termed for the 
sake of convenience, perhaps not quite happily, ‘class divisions.” This twofold 
division of the tribe, although it coincides in its external boundary, is not coincident 
in its internal divisions. The members of the different totems, for instance, are 
scattered over the whole tribal country, and are found in all the local divisions. 
The class and totem names change from place to place in succeeding generations, 
under the influence of the laws which regulate descent through the female line. 
But the local groups are permanent. The hunting grounds which a man roams over 
are left by him to his sons, although these do not bear his name.* 
It is most important for a true understanding of the manner in which the 
society of the Australian savages is organised to not only see the distinction which I 
have drawn between the two organisations, but also, what is perhaps quite as 
important, to become acquainted with the ratio which the two organisations bear 
to each other in the tribes respectively as a whole. 
Starting with the most complete organisation, namely, that of which the 
Wakelbura tribe is a type, wherein the social organisation into classes is fuil and 
vigorous, and runs through the female line, a series of tribes can be shown to exist 
with an increasing variance, until the ultimate result is reached of a tribe in which 
the social organisation into classes has become extinct, leaving only faint traces of 
its former existence behind,} in which the local organisation is the only one in 
which the community is arranged; and, finally, in which descent has completely 
changed to the male line. The study of such a series of communities is one of 
deep interest. It is pregnant with suggestions, and it goes far to prove that which 
ig also indicated by other independent lines of evidence, to which I shall by and 
bye refer, that the society of aborigines of Australia has undergone a process of 
development from a status in which descent was necessarily counted through the 
mother to one in which the conception of descent from an individual father became 
possible. 
The tribes which I shall use for the purpose of illustration in this paper afford a 
brief example of such a series. The Wakelbura tribe stands at the one end with a 
full vigorous class organisation with female descent. 
The Turribul tribe has a class organisation precisely analogous to that of the 
Wakelbura in its primary and sub-classes, but descent is counted through the male 
line under a cross law of the sub-classes, analogous to that of the Wakelbura, and it 
has no totem groups. 
* T have in this section taken the Wakelbura tribe with maternal descent as my text. But there are tribes in which, 
with the same type of organisation, the descent is in the male line. In these the son bears the primary class name of his 
father. 4 
{+ E.G. Kurnai and Chepara tribes. 
