Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/564

 528 Revieivs.

marriage organization, while on p. 140, following Howitt, he identifies a Narrinyeri clan with a " primary local division," where in fact under male descent it denotes a band of kinsmen living in close propinquity. The blunder is in applying the term clan to the Arunta marriage-classes, with which in its ordinary acceptation it has nothing to do, and, having so wrongly applied it, in not sticking to his definition. A parallel mistake is in the use of the word totem for totem-group or totem-clan. "In general," he says, " the totem is identical with the clan," which it is not. What he means is that the totemic group, otherwise called the totem-kin, is identical with the clan.

However, these deductions being admitted, Mr. Wheeler has written a useful little book. If it does not add much to our knowledge, it enables us to clarify our notions of Australian political organization. His notes on the comparative value of authorities are useful. He rightly emphasizes the obscurity of meaning of the terms used by too many writers on the Australian tribes, whether that obscurity result from the vagueness of the natives or that of the writer. He properly criticizes the statement of Maine that " it is not peace which was natural and primitive and old, but rather war," shewing that peace is the normal condilion of these tribes, and that at all events wars are never undertaken for conquest of territory. He shews the rudiments of markets and of private property among them, and the beginning of a distinction between public and private offences. And his protest that the writers on dogmatic International Law have not attempted to deal with the customs prevailing among the more primitive races, with the result of a certain — and, we may add, a not inconsiderable — "distortion of the facts as regards the early history of international customs and morality, which cannot be without its effect on the systematic treatment," is both called for and not at all too strongly put. A study of such works as this would teach writers on International Law to base their theories on securer ground.

E. Sidney Hartland.