he serpent, just as the lizard, in Australia, is credited with this
useful invention.[232] Similar legends among non-Aryan races, Chinese
and Egyptian, are very common.

(6) There remains the evidence of actual fact and custom among Aryan
peoples. The Lycians, according to Herodotus, 'have this peculiar
custom, _wherein they resemble no other men_, they derive their names
from their mothers, and not from their fathers, and through mothers
reckon their kin.' Status also was derived through the mothers.[233]
The old writer's opinion that the custom (so common in Australia,
America and Africa) was unique, is itself a proof of his good faith.
Bachofen (p. 390) remarks that several Lycian inscriptions give the
names of mothers only. Polybius attributes (assigning a fantastic
reason) the same custom of counting kin through mothers to the
Locrians.[234] The British and Irish custom of deriving descents
through women is well known,[235] and a story is told to account for
the practice. The pedigrees of the British kings show that most did
not succeed to their fathers, and the various records of early Celtic
morals go to prove that no other system of kinship than the maternal
would have possessed any value, so uncertain was fatherhood. These are
but hints of the prevalence of institutions which survived among
Teutonic races in the importance attached to the relationship of a
man's sister's son. Though no longer his legal heir, the sister's son
was almost closer than any other kinsman.[236]

We have now summarised and indicated the nature of the evidence which,
on the whole, inclines us to the belief of Mr. M'Lennan rather than of
Sir Henry Maine. The point to which all the testimony adduced
converges, the explanation which most readily solves all the
difficulties, is the explanation of Mr. M'Lennan. The Aryan races
have very generally passed through the stage of scarcity of women,
polyandry, absence of recognised male kinship, and recognition of
kinship through women. What Sir Henry Maine admits as the exception,
we are inclined to regard as having, in a very remote past, been the
rule. No one kind of evidence--neither traces of marriage by capture,
of exogamy, of totemism, of tradition, of noted fact among Lycians and
Picts and Irish--would alone suffice to guide our opinion in this
direction. But the cumulative force of the testimony strikes us as not
inconsiderable, and it must be remembered that the testimony has not
yet be