n system. The limit of kindred was everywhere the family name:
a limit which excludes many real kinsfolk and includes many who are not
kinsfolk at all. In Australia especially, and in America, India, and
Africa, to a slighter extent, that definition of kindred by the family
name actually includes alligators, smoke, paddy melons, rain, crayfish,
sardines, and what you please. {259} Will anyone assert, then, that
people among whom the exogamous prohibition arose were organised on the
system of the patriarchal family, which permits the nature of kinship to
be readily understood at a glance? Is it not plain that the exogamous
prohibition (confessedly Aryan) must have arisen in a stage of culture
when ideas of kindred were confused, included kinship with animals and
plants, and were to us almost, if not quite, unintelligible? It is even
possible, as Mr. M'Lennan says, {260} 'that the prejudice against
marrying women of the same group may have been established _before the
facts of blood relationship had made any deep impression on the human
mind_.' How the exogamous prohibition tends to confirm this view will
next be set forth in our consideration of _Totemism_.

The Evidence from Totemism.--Totemism is the name for the custom by which
a stock (scattered through many local tribes) claims descent from and
kindred with some plant, animal, or other natural object. This object,
of which the effigy is sometimes worn as a badge or crest, members of the
stock refuse to eat. As a general rule, marriage is prohibited between
members of the stock--between all, that is, who claim descent from the
same object and wear the same badge. The exogamous limit, therefore, is
denoted by the stock-name and crest, and kinship is kinship in the wolf,
bear, potato, or whatever other object is recognised as the original
ancestor. Finally, as a general rule, the stock-name is derived through
the mother, and where it is derived through the father there are proofs
that the custom is comparatively modern. It will be acknowledged that
this sort of kindred, which is traced to a beast, bird, or tree, which is
recognised in every person bearing the same stock-name, which is counted
through females, and which governs marriage customs, is not the sort of
kindred which would naturally arise among people regulated on the
patriarchal or monandrous family system. Totemism, however, is a
widespread institution prevailing all over the north of the American