cident of savage wit. The view has been taken
that the phratry animals were originally totems, or animals that became
totems at a later stage. In view of the large number of totems found in
many tribes, or even restricting their number to six or eight in each
phratry, it is not difficult to estimate the probability that cockatoo
and crow would recur in different areas, and that an opposition of
characters should be found in other cases. The hypothesis needs at any
rate to be combined with a theory, firstly, of borrowing of phratry
names, a process which must indeed have played a large part in the
development of the present system, but which does not necessarily
involve the supposition that the borrowed names replaced previously
existing home-made names; and, secondly, of selection of such names as
were not borrowed.

It has been mentioned that the principle of tribal property in land or,
to be strictly accurate, in hunting grounds, is, at the present day, a
fundamental one in native Australian jurisprudence. But, as is shown by
the map, in some cases the phratries are split into two or more
segments[106], more or less remote from one another, geographically
speaking. Now this apparent segmentation must be due to migration; it
can hardly arise from the chance adoption of identical names; for the
groups in which the names occur are, though separated by a considerable
distance, not so remote as, on the theory of chance selection, we should
expect them to be, in other words the probability is in favour of the
segmentation of an original group or its cleavage by an intrusive
element. Of the causes of this drift of population, which on a large
scale, and under pressure of any kind, might well overrule even the
rights of property, we have naturally no idea. In a homogeneous mass
like the population of Australia, and especially in a mass whose level
of culture is so low as to leave no remains behind which we could use
for the purposes of chronology, it is hopeless to expect any solution of
any of the problems connected with drift of population. One thing only
seems clear, and on this point we may hope for some light from the data
of philology, namely that the migration was long subsequent to the
original _Volkerwanderung_; for this must have preceded the rise of
phratry names, which again must have preceded the migration of which the
segmentation of groups, evidenced by the names themselves, is at
present, and in default of the