found, is a question of some interest for which there
appears to be no answer in the literature concerning the Australian
aborigines.

Even if, therefore, we had reason to believe that all totem kins in a
given tribe or group of tribes could make out a good case for their
descent from single male or female ancestors, which is far from being
the case, we should still have to recognise that kinship and not
consanguinity is the proper term to apply to the relationship between
members of the same group. For, as we have seen, it may be recruited
from without in some cases, while in others, persons who are
demonstrably not of the same blood, are regarded as totem-brethren by
virtue of the common name.

Enough has now been said to make clear the difference between
consanguinity and kinship and to exemplify the nature of some of the
transitional forms. As we have seen, it is on considerations of either
consanguinity or kinship that many marriage prohibitions are based.

Marriage prohibitions depend broadly on three kinds of considerations:
(1) Kinship, intermarriage being forbidden to members of the same
kinship group; a brief introductory sketch of the nature and
distribution of kinship groups will be found below. (2) Locality. In New
Guinea, parts of Australia, Melanesia, Africa, and possibly elsewhere,
_local exogamy_ is found. By this is meant that the resident in one
place is bound to go outside his own group for a mate, and may perhaps
be bound to seek a spouse in a specified locality. This kind of
organisation is in Australia almost certainly an offshoot of kinship
organisation (see p. 10), and is _prima facie_ due to the same cause in
other areas. (3) (_a_) consanguinity, and (_b_) affinity. The first of
these considerations is regulative of marriage even in Australia, where
the influence of kinship organisations is in the main supreme in these
matters. We learn from Roth and other authorities that blood cousins,
children of own brother and sister, may not marry in North-West Central
Queensland, although the kinship regulations designate them as the
proper spouses one for the other. (_b_) Considerations of affinity, the
relations set up by marriage, do not affect the status of the parties,
so far as the legality of marriage is concerned, till a somewhat higher
stage is reached.

In the present work we are concerned with kinship groups and the
marriage regulations based on them. A kinship group, whether it be a
tote