156 R. H. MATHEWS. 
families, groups, and communities, with some remarks on the 
rules of marriage and descent established in relation to these 
‘ divisions. In 1896, this paper was followed by another to the 
Anthropological Society at Washington, U.S.A., in which I gave 
a short outline of the structure of the Wiradjuri system of tribal 
divisions and marriage laws, with the intermarriages and descent 
of the totems.” In both these papers I pointed out that our 
knowledge of this subject was incomplete and unsatisfactory, and 
drew attention to the necessity for further investigation. 
Since writing the memoirs referred to, I have extended my 
researches, and have gathered additional information among the 
Kamilaroi, the Wiradjuri, and other tribes in different parts of 
New South Wales, which will, it is hoped, enable me to place the 
subject of the totemic divisions of these people, with their laws of 
marriage and descent, more fully before the reader than has been 
accomplished hitherto. 
In the present article an attempt is made to dispense with the 
terms “class” and “sub-class,” which I have always looked upon 
as misnomers, although in the two former papers I adopted the 
names given to these tribal divisions by Mr. Ridley and the other 
writers who followed his nomenclature. For the names thus 
discarded I have substituted the terms “totemic group” and_ 
“section,” which it is hoped will be considered more appropriate. 
Another innovation which I have introduced is in making the 
name of the totem more important than that of the group oF 
section. It is proposed in the following pages to deal first with 
the structure of the Kamilaroi totemic divisions, and then to 
describe the divisions which obtain among the Wiradjuri tribes 
in the Murrumbidgee district. 
THe KamiLaro1 System. 
At some time in the history of the ancestors of the Kamilaroi 
people, all the members of the community were segregated into 
1 Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. Aust., (Q.), x., 18— 34, plate i. 
2 American Anthropologist, (Washington), rx., 411-416. 
