130 ON THE ORGANISATION OF AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 
The process of social development has evidently not been quite the same, nor 
has it progressed at the same rate of change in each tribe of the vast number of 
tribes in Australia. As I have already said, the social conditions of the tribes enable 
the investigator to place them in a series, commencing with that tribe whose 
organisation is most archaic. The various systems, or rather, to speak more correctly, 
the variations of system of relationship terms, may also be placed in a progressive 
series. The first will represent a community having terms fitting accurately with the 
theory of group marriage, and agreeing very closely with the existing practice of 
croup marriage as I have explained it in this memoir. The most extreme variation 
will retain the principles of the group system, but it will be found on examination 
that the earlier types of groups have been more or less broken up, and that some of 
the group terms have been differentiated into individualised terms. It will be, 
moreover, observed that the most differentiated systems of relationship do not fully 
agree with the actual practice of the several tribes using them, yet that they do agree 
with the practice of other tribes standing further back in the series. 
The conservatism of savages as to that which has been handed down to them 
from their ancestors fully accounts for this, and one may herein also see the tenacity 
with which ancient customs hold in their death grip those who have been reared 
in them. 
In illustrating the typical group relationship terms, and in explaining their 
relation to the class systems, I shall, for the sake of clearness, disregard the group 
of sub-classes and totems, and shall use the two primary classes. The illustration 
would not be made any clearer by introducing the lesser social divisions which rest 
upon and are underlaid by the fundamental older law. 
For the sake of brevity and clearness the two moieties of the community may be 
indicated as the A moiety and the B moiety. The fundamental law, therefore, is 
that A male marries B female, and vice versa. In the majority of tribes children take 
the class names of their mothers. Cases in which descent is in the paternal line 
may be for the present disregarded. 
Such marriages and descents may be formulated by a simple diagram in which 
capital letters are used for males, and small letters for females, thus :— 
A 
B 
&e. 
