be male descent
where fatherhood is unrecognised. And here I would interpose the
remark that the use of the term descent, male descent and female
descent, in these studies is far too indiscriminate.[381] Descent
means succession by blood kinship by acknowledged sons or daughters,
and this is exactly what does not always occur. Sonship and
daughtership in our sense of the term are not always known to
savagery. They were not known to the Arunta males, for fatherhood was
not recognised by them and motherhood was not definitely used in the
social sense. All that the Arunta can be said to have developed is a
mother-right society with male ascendancy in the group.[382] Group
sons succeeded to group fathers, but individual descent from father to
son there is not.

There remain the exogamous classes. In the first place, it is
necessary to get rid of a difficulty raised by Mr. Lang. "In no tribe
with female descent can a district have its local totem as among the
Arunta.... This can only occur under male reckoning of descent."[383]
But surely so acute an observer as Mr. Lang would see that with female
descent right through, as it exists among the Khasia and Kocch people
of Assam, local totem centres are just as possible as with male
descent. Mr. Lang is conscious of some discrepancy here, for a little
later on he repeats the statement that local totem centres "can only
occur and exist under male reckoning of descent," but adds the
significant qualification "in cases where the husbands do not go to
the wives' region of abode."[384] This is the whole point. Where
husbands do go to the wives' region of abode, as they do among the
Khasis and the Kocch, female descent would allow of the formation of
local totem centres. This is not far from the position of the Arunta.
They are mother-right societies. The mother secures the totem name.
The father, _de facto_, is not father according to the ideas of the
Arunta people, is at best only one of a group of possible fathers
according to the practices of the Arunta people. Therefore, the local
totem centre is formed out of a system which may be called a
mother-right system for the purpose of scientific description, but
which is not even a mother-right system to the natives, because
motherhood is not the foundation of the local group.

Secondly, we have the important fact, which Mr. Lang has duly noted,
though he does not apparently see its significance in the argument as
to origins, that t