s son is known to her by the same name as the sons of
other women, either that during the period of group marriage she
actually bore the sons of the other women or that the whole group of
women produced their sons by their joint efforts. Finding that the term
which is translated "son" is equally applied by the remainder of the
group of women to the son of the individual woman, whose case we have
been considering, we may discard the former hypothesis and come to the
conclusion that if there was a period of group marriage there was also
one of group motherhood. This interesting fact may be commended to the
attention of zoologists.

It is perhaps unnecessary to pursue the argument any further. The single
point on which Spencer and Gillen rely is sufficiently refuted by a
single _reductio ad absurdum_. If more proof is needed it may be found
in Dr Howitt's work[151]. We learn from him that a man is the younger
brother of his maternal grandmother, and consequently the maternal
grandfather of his second cousin. Surely it is not possible in this case
to contend that the "terms of relationship" are expressive of anything
but duties and status. It seems unreasonable to maintain in the
interests of an hypothesis that a man can be his own great uncle and
the son of more than one mother.

From the foregoing discussion it will be clear that there are very
grave, if not insurmountable, difficulties in the way of regarding the
"terms of relationship" as being in reality such. In reply to those who
regard them as status terms it is urged that if they are not terms of
relationship, then the savages have no terms of any sort to express
relationships which we regard as obvious, the implication being that
this is unthinkable.

Now in the first place it may be pointed out that the converse is
certainly true. Civilised man has a large number of terms of
relationship, but he has none for such ideas as _noa_; a boy has no term
for all men who might have been his father; a woman has no name for the
children of all women who might have married her husband, if she had not
anticipated them. To the savage this is just as unthinkable as the
converse seems to be to some civilised men.

In the second place it is perfectly obvious that the savage has, as a
matter of fact, no names for the quite unmistakeable relationship of
mother and child. The name which an Australian mother applies to her
son, she applies equally to the sons of all other women o