n a local
tribe?' These questions, Mr. M'Lennan thought, could not be answered on
the patriarchal hypothesis. His own theory, or rather his theory as
understood by the present writer, may be stated thus. In the earliest
times there were homogeneous groups, which became, totem kin. Let us say
that, in a certain district, there were groups called woodpeckers,
wolves, bears, suns, swine, each with its own little territory. These
groups were exogamous, and derived the name through the mother. Thus, in
course of time, when sun men married a wolf girl, and her children were
wolves, there would be wolves in the territory of the suns, and thus each
stock would be scattered through all the localities, just as we see in
Australia and America. Let us suppose that (as certainly is occurring in
Australia and America) paternal descent comes to be recognised in custom.
This change will not surprise Sir Henry Maine, who admits that a system
of male may alter, under stress of circumstances, to a system of female
descents. In course of time, and as knowledge and common sense advance,
the old superstition of descent from a woodpecker, a bear, a wolf, the
sun, or what not, becomes untenable. A human name is assumed by the
group which had called itself the woodpeckers or the wolves, or perhaps
by a local tribe in which several of these stocks are included. Then a
fictitious human ancestor is adopted, and perhaps even adored. Thus the
wolves might call themselves Claudii, from their chief's name, and,
giving up belief in descent from a wolf, might look back to a fancied
ancestor named Claudius. The result of these changes will be that an
exogamous totem kin, with female descent, has become a gens, with male
kinship, and only the faintest trace of exogamy. An example of somewhat
similar processes must have occurred in the Highland clans after the
introduction of Christianity, when the chief's Christian name became the
patronymic of the people who claimed kinship with him and owned his sway.

Are there any traces at all of totemism in what we know of the Roman
gentes? Certainly the traces are very slight; perhaps they are only
visible to the eye of the intrepid anthropologist. I give them for what
they are worth, merely observing that they do tally, as far as they go,
with the totemistic theory. The reader interested in the subject may
consult the learned Streinnius's 'De Gentibus Romanis,' p. 104 (Aldus,
Venice, 1591).

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