304 R. H. MATHEWS. 



place where this is more real than in a blackfellows' camp. 

 Her brothers know where she is, and will not forget her 

 totemic claims. A boy's mother's brother is an important 

 personage in all native assemblages, for whatever purpose 

 they have met. He is there to see that justice is meted 

 out to his sister's son, as well as to take part in passing 

 him through the initiation and other qualifying ceremonies 

 of his tribe. And in communities where the progeny inherit 

 the totem of the mother, a youth and his maternal uncle 

 are fellow totemsmen. 



The chief difference in the sociology just described, and 

 that of the tribes of Western Victoria, consists in the fact 

 that among the latter the totems are perpetuated through 

 the women, which renders the development of totemic 

 clans impossible. In Western Victoria the wives are taken 

 away from their own people into the families of their hus- 

 bands, as in all Australian tribes, but the children take 

 their phratry, totem and other designations from their 

 female parent ; consequently, we find all the divisions 

 scattered indiscriminately throughout the territory of the 

 entire community or nation. 



Before quitting the subject of sociology, it may be as 

 well to record in this place that I was the first author to 

 discover and report the existence of tribes in north-west 

 Queensland possessing eight divisions in their social struc- 

 ture. In 1898 I pubished a table illustrating this organisa- 

 tion on the Nicholson River. 1 In the following year, 1899, 

 I tabulated another set of eight intermarrying sections, 

 found among the Inchalachee tribe on Barkly's Tableland 

 and the sources of the Gregory River in Queensland. 2 In 



1 " Divisions of Some North Queensland Tribes," Journ. Roy. Soc. N.S. 

 Wales, Vol. xxxn., pp. 251 - 252. The American Anthropologist, Vol. i., 

 N.S., p. 596. 



2 " Divisions of Aboriginal Tribes of Queensland," Journ. Eoy. Soc, 

 N. S. Wales, Vol. xxxiii., p. 111. 



