ilies,
four or five at most, which, for the most part, singly or in pairs,
wander round hunting, fishing, gathering honey and digging up the wild
yams; whilst they likewise take shelter together in shallow caves,
where a roof, a piece of skin to lie on--though this is not
essential--and, that most precious luxury of all, a fire, represent,
apart from food, the sum total of their creature comforts.

Now, under these circumstances, it is not, perhaps, wonderful that
the relationships within a group should be decidedly close. Indeed,
the correct thing is for the children of a brother and sister to marry;
though not, it would seem, for the children of two brothers or of two
sisters. And yet there is no approach to promiscuity, but, on the
contrary, a very strict monogamy, infidelities being as rare as they
are deeply resented. That they had clans of some sort was, indeed,
known to Professor Hobhouse and to the authorities whom he follows;
but these clans are dismissed as having but the slightest organization
and very few functions. An entirely new light, however, has been thrown
on the meaning of this clan-system by the recent researches of Dr.
and Mrs. Seligmann. It now turns out that some of the Veddas are
exogamous--that is to say, are obliged by custom to marry outside their
own clan--though others are not. The question then arises, Which, for
the Veddas, is the older system, marrying-out or marrying-in? Seeing
what a miserable remnant the Veddas are, I cannot but believe that
we have here the case of a formerly exogamous people, groups of which
have been forced to marry-in, simply because the alternative was not
to marry at all. Of course, it is possible to argue that in so doing
they merely reverted to what was once everywhere the primeval condition
of man. But at this point historical science tails off into mere
guesswork.

* * * * *

We reach relatively firm ground, on the other hand, when we pass on
to consider the social organization of such exogamous and totemic
peoples as the natives of Australia. The only trouble here is that
the subject is too vast and complicated to permit of a handling at
once summary and simple. Perhaps the most useful thing that can be
done for the reader in a short space is to provide him with a few
elementary distinctions, applying not only to the Australians, but
more or less to totemic societies in general. With the help of these
he may proceed to gra