Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/119

 Correspondence. 93

I also observed, before reading Mr. Thomas's review, that Dr. Frazer's statement, (vol. i., p. 248), about the primal /(^ro/ segrega- tion of the two phratries, would necessarily make the exogamous rule impossible. Men would associate with the accessible women, those of their own phratries. The local segregation of the phratries is the result of reckoning descent in the male line, and it entails the break up of the whole "class" system of exogamy, as Mr. Howitt has pointed out.

I think it unfortunate that Dr. Frazer set aside Mr. Strehlow's two volumes on the Aranda and Loritja. Even if he suspected Mr. Strehlow and the missionaries on points of religion, the volumes are full of authentic matter which religious bias could not affect, and they contain many authentic native texts with transla- tions. From one of these we learn that, if legend for once speaks true, the Arunta " classes " were once locally segregated as in southern Victoria.

These remarks entirely concern matters of detail. Whether they be of any weight or not, the debt of anthropology to Dr. Frazer, for a book which only his industry could have achieved, is incalculable, and deserves the sincere gratitude of all students.

A. Lang.

Qu'est-ce que le Totemisme?

Le probleme du totemisme revient periodiquement h. la surface des discussions scientifiques sous forme de crises polemiques qui commencent par affecter les savants, puis se transmettent de proche en proche jusqu'au grand public cultive. Les deux crises prec^dentes se glorifient des noms de MacLennan et de Morgan d'une part, de ceux de Frazer et de Lang de I'autre ; la troisieme est en pleine efflorescence. L'agent responsable en est M. J. G. Frazer, et nul ne sait encore combien seront ceux qui prendront une part active au nouveau debat. 11 est necessaire d'ajouter que, jusqu'ici, seuls les Anglais, les Americains et les Frangais com- battent dans cette lutte courtoise entre theoriciens, mais que les Allemands y ont en general assiste de loin, quelques-uns seule- ment d'entre eux. comme Parkinson, ayant propose une theorie