avoidance. This
he attempts to equate with Dieri group marriage. It is not however clear
that it is more than what we have called a liaison. Our authority does
not state that it is recognised as lawful by public opinion, nor yet
that any ceremony initiates the relations[166]. In the absence of these
details we cannot regard his view as probable. It may however be noted
that the widow in this tribe passes to the brother.

The only other case of "group marriage" which Dr Howitt gives[167] is in
the Wakelbura tribe of C. Queensland. Here however, so far from being
group marriage, it is, according to his own statement, simply adelphic
polyandry. A man's unmarried brothers have marital rights and duties,
the child is said to term them its father. It may however be pointed out
that this hardly bears on the question of group marriage, for it would
do so even if no marital relations existed between its mother and any
other man besides the primary husband.

It will be seen that our information is very fragmentary, and what we
have is neither precise nor free from contradiction. A most essential
point, for example, is the connection of the totem-kin with the
_pirrauru_ relationship. Among the Dieri the men may be of different
totems. Is this the case among the Wakelbura? Was it always the case
among the Dieri?

Before we leave Dr Howitt's work it is necessary to refer again to the
Kurnai. The most important point in connection with the Kurnai, so far
as the present work is concerned, is that, contradictory to Bulmer's
statement[168] that unmarried men have access to their brothers' wives,
and sometimes even married men, Dr Howitt mentions[169] as a singular
fact that he recalls one instance of a wife being lent in that tribe.

Dr Howitt however holds that there are traces of group marriage in the
tribe, and refers to the fact that the term _maian_[170] is applied to a
wife by her husband and by his brother, whose "official wife[171]" she
is thus declared to be, and that a brother takes his deceased brother's
widow. He regards this rather unfortunately named custom of the levirate
as having its root in group marriage. Now _maian_ is applied, not only
by a husband to a wife, but by a wife to her husband's sister, and by a
sister to her brother's wife. If therefore the use of the term proves
anything, it proves, not group marriage, as Dr Howitt understands it,
but promiscuity, the prior existence of the undivided commune, and thi