Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/305

Rh repeat my assurance of my regret for my misapprehension of his page 500, and for the misplaced comma. To the best of my power, I have forwarded my correction to every quarter in which it is likely to be published, have placed slips containing the corrigendum in the Secret of the Totem and the Enahlayi Tribe, and have withdrawn the criticism based on the misunderstanding.

In Mr. Jevons' review of my Secret of the Totem, I cannot conceal from myself that those who differ from him and from me have a parry and riposte to some of his arguments. But there is a passage concerning a very difficult question, in which, perhaps, he does not understand my view of the question (Folk-Lore, xvii. No. 2). I quote Mr. Jevons: "We have to ask why are we to believe that the phratries were originally local groups? In effect, the phratry to which I belong includes the women I may not marry; the other phratry includes the women I may marry. Why then should either phratry have been originally one local group? Why need either phratry ever have had a local habitation and a name? The women I may not marry are scattered about all over Australia, and so are the women I may marry. Even on Mr. Lang's theory, the latter never at any time, however far back we go, were concentrated in any one spot; and the former also must have been scattered pretty widely, when 'each animal-named group became full of members of other animal names by descent.' At that time, go where I would, I should find women having by descent the same animal name as myself, and therefore forbidden to me. In fine, the classification of women into prohibited and lawful, i.e. into the two phratries, cannot be the result of the rise of two leading local groups."

Here Mr. Jevons has in his mind, I think, the society, of the Australia of to-day, a society of inter-tribal peace on the whole, with frequent inter-tribal marriages. But my theory deals with a presumed remote past, with no