114 ON THE ORGANISATION OF AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 
is, I venture to say, very generally accepted by anthropologists. But Mr. H. M. Curr 
in his late work dissents from this proposition. It, therefore, becomes more than 
advisable to record at some length the evidence upon which the existence, at the 
present time, of group marriage and descent is established. The study of the 
Australian marriage customs is calculated not only to show in what manner these 
savages have regulated the relations of the sexes, but it also affords a side light, which 
casts a strong illumination into obscure places in the existing customs of other races, 
as well as into the crumbling records of the past, thus enabling the student to 
decipher, at least in part, their otherwise unintelligible records. 
Although there is a general similarity of custom on broad lines throughout 
Australia, yet, when one comes to compare the customs of a number of tribes, one 
sees readily that just as there are so many dialects, being variations of one stock 
language, so there are almost as many variations in general custom. ‘Thus when the 
inquirer brings his results into orderly sequence for comparison, he finds, taking for 
instance the status of marriage as the basis of comparison, that the tribes may be 
arranged in a connected series, in which the lowest discovered form of group marriage, 
associated with individual marriage, is at one end, and the highest form of individual 
marriage (as found in Australian tribes), with either the rarest occurrence of group 
marriage, or with mere traces of its existence, at the other. The intermediate 
examples approximate more or less to one type or the other. 
It is thus found that there are no two tribes which are precisely upon the same 
level as to status of marriage. Two results seen from such a comparison of the data 
are—first, that there appears to have been a process of development of institutions 
in the tribes, though of unequal intensity; and second, that it is most unsafe to 
generalise from one, or even a few examples to the whole series. 
The organic structure of the Australian tribes is so complicated, and the various 
parts of the organisation are naturally so dependent upon each other, that in following 
out an inquiry as to the laws of marriage in any tribe, one is brought into contact 
with other questions which are so intimately connected with that which is being 
followed out that one is compelled, in order to trace its course, to also follow out and 
explore those new tracts. In fact, the whole of the customs which form the founda- 
tion and the superstructure of aboriginal society ramify so much that in order to 
understand any part it becomes necessary to study the whole. 
This is, indeed, only saying in other words that the social organisation in its 
erowth has developed as a whole by the gradual growth of the component parts. 
In following out an inquiry into the marriage customs, one is forced to inquire 
into the principles which underlie the complicated set of class divisions on which they 
rest, the complicated and peculiar system of terms which describe and give names to 
