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originally vague and undetermined, and that they have gradually become more and more definite ? But among such relationships, that of what we may call husband and wife is one, and whether it took the form of temporary monogamy, polygamy, or regulated promiscuity, (the two latter in Mr, Thomas' sense), matters little. In any one of those three cases there would have been a period when a vague term like fioa corresponded to the actual practice, though Australian society, by appropriation of women, may long since have outgrown it without developing a new term to express the more defined relationships which have since come into being. The subject is, of course, too large for discussion here, and I will not pursue it. But there are two points in Mr. Thomas' argument, as applied to Australian customs, to which I want briefly to refer. A stress far greater than it will bear has been laid upon the priority in the hfe of an individual woman of tippa-malku \o pirrauru "marriage." We are told that no woman can enter into the latter until she has entered into the former; and that we must thence infer that pirraiim " marriage " is not a survival of " group-marriage," but a later and aberrant social arrangement. Further, a special ceremony is performed for the pirrauru marriage, but not for the tippa-malkii marriage; and Mr. Thomas argues that if pirrauru be " a survival of group- marriage, we should expect the ceremony to be performed for the tippa-7nalku union and not for the pirrauru" But it must be remembered that according to existing practice among the Dieri and other tribes with which pirrauru is in vogue, the tippa- malku contract of betrothal takes place in infancy ; hence every adult woman is already a tippa-malku wife. Practically, there- fore, the only meaning of the condition is that pirraum can be entered into with none but adult women. Whether pirrauru be a direct survival of "group-marriage" in the sense Mr. Thomas attaches to that term I will not argue. He has given some reason apart from those I am discussing, to doubt it. But the mere fact of performance of a ceremony to initiate pirraum and none to initiate tippa-malku^ would not seem to me to necessitate our holding that pirrauru is the later and tippa-malku the earlier social arrangement; for pirrauru is an arrangement between adults, whereas tippa-malku is an anticipation