Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/505

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there are contradictory statements, cf. pp. 114, 603), Mara, and other tribes .... the daughter is given away by her mother's brother." Corresponding with this, while among the Arunta, Unmatjera, and Kaitish, the son-in-law is charged with the duty of avenging the father-in-law's death, among the Warramunga that duty falls to the husband of his sister's daughter, and among the Binbinga to his mother's brother's son. The position of the mother's brother in the family is an infallible index of the present or past existence of mother-right. The power of the mother's brother over his sister's daughter cannot arise during father-right; and wherever we find it coexisting with father-right we must infer the former existence of mother-right. Similarly in these northern tribes " after a man's death his chattels pass into the possession of men who are his mother's brothers or his daughters' husbands — that is, everything goes to men of the moiety of the tribe to which the dead man's mother belonged."

Space does not permit of any discussion of other beliefs and institutions, otherwise I think it could be shown that all alike they point in the same direction, namely, that the Arunta are the most advanced and not the most primitive of the Central Austra- lian tribes. The advance which they have made is not necessarily in the direct line of civilisation ; but at all events it has brought them a long way from the primitive condition of the race — much further than tribes in more favoured environment ; and it is due mainly, if not entirely, to the climatic influences of the central steppes.

It will be understood that what I challenge is not the state- ments of the distinguished authors of these volumes, but their inferences. Doubtless, for a student who has never come into personal contact with any savage race, least of all with the race under discussion, to challenge the inferences of travellers who have seen so accurately and recorded so much, is to exhibit no little audacity. The scientific importance of the conclusions to be derived from the study of the present volume, as well as of its predecessor, must be my excuse, as it has already been that of students of more commanding authority than I can pretend to, for desiring to have the phenomena considered from a different point of view.

Like its predecessor, the new volume will be indispensable to anthropological students. Like its predecessor, it is a model of