omitting those tribes for which our lists of totems are
admittedly not complete, we find that emu, kangaroo, snake, eaglehawk,
and iguana are found as totems in about two-thirds of the cases; then,
after a long interval, come wallaby and crow, less than half as often,
with opossum rather more frequently, in half the total number. But it is
clearly outside the bounds of probability that four of the commonest
totems should not give their names, so far as is known, to phratries,
while eaglehawk recurs five, crow six, and cockatoo three times, the two
latter in one case in a remote area. Not only so, but the opposition
between the phratry names--black and white or the like--is
unintelligible, if, as on Dr Durkheim's theory, the phratries are simply
the elementary totem groups which intermarried and threw off secondary
totem kins. But criticism of other theories opens a wide field, into
which it is best not to diverge.

On the development theory the phratries came into existence perhaps as
the result of the persistence of an old custom of exogamy, non-moral in
its inception, or, it may be, as a result of the rise of totemic tabus.
The reformation theory, on the other hand, makes the conscious
attainment of a better state of society the object of the institution of
a dichotomous organisation. It will therefore be well to see what
results in practice from the phratriac organisation.

In the two-phratry area (other rules, which usually exist, apart) it is
impossible for children of the same mother or father, or of sisters or
of brothers, to marry, nor can one of the parents, either mother or
father, according to the rule of descent, take her or his own child in
marriage. Now if the object of the reformation was to prevent parents
from marrying children, it was clearly not attained. If, on the other
hand, it was intended to prevent children of the same mother or father
from intermarrying, the result could have been attained far more simply,
either by direct prohibition, such as is found in other cases, or by the
institution of totemic exogamy, which, in the view of some authorities,
already existed, and consequently made the phratry superfluous.

According to Dr Frazer's 1905 theory, phratries were introduced to
prevent brother and sister marriage and exogamous bars began in the
female line[110]. Against this hypothesis may be urged not only the
objections first stated but also the fact that for Dr Frazer the Arunta
are primi