NOTES ON SOME ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 81 



their bloods into two lots of Guaigulir and Guaimundhun, 

 then each lot will contain representatives of the Ngurrawun 

 and Mumbim cycles. Not only are the cycles and bloods 

 inextricably mixed np, but there is no exogamy in either 

 of these systems of division. 



The facts set forth in the foregoing pages incidentally 

 raise the question whether exogamy has a place in the 

 social structure of the Australian aborigines. It is impos- 

 sible to bisect a tribe in such a way that the two parts 

 shall be quite independent, so that the men of one part or 

 cycle shall marry the women of the other cycle, and such 

 women only. In dealing with the tribes in the Northern 

 Territory a few pages back we classified the community 

 into two cycles, because there are two sets of women, 

 each set comprising four sections, with perpetual succession 

 in a certain rotation. 



The daughters belong to the same cycle as their mothers 

 and become the wives of the men of their father's cycle. 

 The brothers of these girls, who also belong to their 

 mother's cycle, in like manner become the husbands of the 

 women of their father's cycle. These rules however, only 

 hold good for what we have distinguished as No. I and No. 

 II wives. When we come to No. Ill and No. IV wives or 

 husbands, they are taken from the other cycle (see p. 71, 

 ante). Hence our Table III is not an example of exogamy. 



When Spencer and Gillen reported the divisions of the 

 Chingalee in 1904, 1 four years after the publication of my 

 Table III, they came to the conclusion that descent was 

 counted through the men, and prepared a table to the 

 following effect. I am using my own spelling of the section 

 names for the sake of uniformity. 



1 Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. luO. 

 F— Aug. 7, 1907. 



