400 REV. JOHN MATHEW. 



Mr. Fison in dealing with the rise of the Australian exogamous 

 classes lays great stress upon the Murdoo legend, an aboriginal 

 tradition, the substance of which is that the classes restricting 

 matrimony were constituted to remedy the bad results of incestu- 

 ous marriage. That these classes do pi-event certain close marriages 

 is true, but is it logical to conclude therefore that they were 

 inaugurated for this purpose ? It seems to me that the Murdoo 

 legend is too flimsy to support any conclusion and if the classes 

 were due to some other cmise than a conscious reformatory efort, 

 their epxts would still he the same. I prefer to" regard them as 

 springing f loni natural conditions of life, having a reformatory 

 tendency no doubt, but the reformation neither recognised nor 

 designed by those who were the subjects of it. The obstacles 

 presented to intermarriage of persons near of kin has put enquirers 

 upon what is probably a wrong scent. Independently I arrived 

 at the view which Mr. McLennan takes, viz., that the matrimonial 

 classes are memorials and results of the coalescence of ( 



stocks of people, which were once distinct and exogamous 



tribes 



, and this view is in harmony wit 

 of the Australian people enunciated in this treatise. ±5otn mr- 

 Morgan and Mr. McLennan set society in motion under a condition 

 of promiscuous intercourse. This is quite an imaginary starting- 

 point and reduces mankind to a state of degradation lower than 

 the brutes, which in many cases and especially in the case of the 

 higher apes go in pairs. If gorillas have sufficient decency to pair 

 ott; why may not primitive man have done the same ? With a 

 view to accounting for the change of kinship through females to 

 kinship through males, Mr. McLennan finds it expedient to make 

 polyandry follow promiscuity, and the necessity for polyandry he 

 finds in the infanticide of female children and the consequent 

 disturbance of the balance of the sexes. But the prevalence ot 

 infanticide of female infants is only postulated not proved, and 

 although in various countries polyandry has been the rule, and m 

 others has been practised to some extent, nevertheless a polyan- 

 drous stage of society in all races is far from established. Judging 

 from the propensities of humanity as witnessed at the present day 

 in savage races, polygyny is a much more favoured form of connu^ 

 bium tlian polyandry. And far more may be said in support of 

 there liMving bcon ,is a rulo a surplus of females in a community 



sually preserves the females, and then either for the conquerors 

 I- the conquered polyandry would seem too unnatural to be dream 

 I Pharoah's destruction of the Israelitish male children although 



