, with the rise of the matrilineal descent, which has been
discussed above, eventually taken from the group to which the mother
belonged.

During these processes the custom had sprung up to select a wife, not at
random from any of the probably more or less hostile surrounding groups,
but from one particular group with which the group of the candidate for
matrimony had in the course of time come to be on friendly terms.

The names of these two groups, which drew in other smaller groups,
became the phratry names of the newly-formed aggregate, the largest unit
known to primitive society at that stage of its evolution, and
corresponding roughly to what we have defined as a tribe; for it was
united by bonds of friendship, and in the course of time the language,
originally very different no doubt, how different we can, indeed, hardly
say, must have so far coalesced, owing to the interchange of wives (in
so far as a distinct woman's language, traces of which are found among
some savage tribes, was not developed), as to produce a single tongue.

This theory Mr Lang has now fortified and elaborated in _The Secret of
the Totem_, the most important new point being the demonstration of the
fact that totem kins which bear names of the same significance as the
phratry names are almost invariably in the eponymous phratries--a clear
proof that law and not chance has determined their position.

As an explanation of the distribution of phratry names Mr Lang adopts a
theory which combines the hypotheses of evolution and borrowing, and
thus explains both the wide area covered by some systems, and the
increasing multitude of organisations confined to small districts, which
more minute research reveals. This does not, it is true, explain the
geographical remoteness of different parts of the same system or of
allied systems, shown to be so by the identity of phratry animal or
name. Not only is Wuthera-Mallera split into two sections; but a portion
of Wuthera-Yungaru seems to be in the same position; if we may take the
Badieri Yungo as equivalent to Yungaru, dispersion alone suffices to
explain the case; but if Yungo is derived from the Kurnandaburi, who
have Mattera as the sister phratry, then we have the Badieri phratry
names borrowed each from a different tribe, at any rate in appearance.

In reality this state of things affords the strongest possible support
to Mr Lang's hypothesis, if only we can suppose that the formation of
tribes i