g; and it is a
matter for careful enquiry how far the same holds good in Australia,
where the fact of fatherhood is in some cases asserted to be
unrecognised by the natives. In speaking of consanguinity therefore, it
must be made quite clear whether consanguinity according to native ideas
or according to our own ideas is meant.

The customary limitations and extensions of consanguinity, on the other
hand, cause more inconvenience. They are of course sometimes combined
with the other kind, which we may term quasi-physiological, but with
this combination we need not deal, as we are concerned to analyse only
on broad lines the nature of these elements. Just as, with us, kinship
and consanguinity largely coincide, so with primitive peoples are the
kinship organisations immense, if one-sided, extensions of blood
relationship, at all events in theory. In many parts of the world a
totem kin traces its descent to a single male or female ancestor; and
even where, as in Australia, this is not the case, blood brotherhood is
expressly asserted of the totem kin[3].

Entry into the totem kin may often be gained by adoption, though not
apparently in Australia, and the blood relationship thus becomes an
artificial one and partakes, even if the initial assumption be accepted
as true, far more of the nature of kinship than of consanguinity. In
Australia, and possibly in other parts of the world, there is a further
extension of natal kinship. Although the tribe is not regarded as
descended from a single pair, its members are certainly reckoned as of
kin to each other in some way; the situation may be summarised by saying
that under one of the systems of kinship organisation (the two-phratry),
half of the members of the tribe in a given generation are related to a
given man, A, and the other half to his wife. More than one observer
assures us that there is a solidarity about the tribe, which regards
some, if not all other tribes as "wild blacks," though it may be on
terms of friendship and alliance with certain neighbours, and feel
itself united to them by a bond analogous to, though weaker than, that
which holds its own members together.

If however a homonymous totem kin exists even in a hostile or absolutely
unknown tribe, a member of it will be regarded, as we learn from Dr
Howitt, as a brother. How this view is reconciled with the belief that
the tribe in question is alien and in no way akin to that in which the
other totem kin is