Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/210

180 men similar secondary and tertiary subdivisions have occurred, though they seem now to have vanished without leaving a trace. The oldest social stratification, so to say, of mankind is better preserved among the Australian aborigines than among any other people of whom we have knowledge. To have obtained an accurate record of that stratification before it finally disappeared, as it must very soon do, is an achievement of the highest importance for the understanding of human history; and we owe the possession of that record, now safely deposited in the archives of science, mainly to the exertions and the influence of Howitt and Fison.

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