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152 in the still savage regions of the world there are any living survivals of early totemism, surely it must be in Australia that they are to be sought for.

Therefore there are but three of the hypotheses referred to with which I feel myself concerned. First, that advanced by Messrs Spencer and Gillen; the second, which is substantially the same, but independently arrived at by Dr. J. G. Frazer; and the third by Mr. Andrew Lang. Professor Haddon has also made a suggestion bearing on totemism which must be considered.

Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say, that in Australian tribes the primary function of a totemistic group is to ensure by magic a supply of the object which gives its name to the totemistic group. There is an important series of traditions in the Arunta tribe which deals with a gradual development, and with a former state of organisation and custom quite different from, and in important respects at variance with, the organisation and customs of the present day.

The traditions point to the introduction of an exogamic law after the totemic groups were fully developed, and also that the introduction of that system was due to the deliberate action of certain ancestors.

The hypothesis starts with the assumption of the existence of totemic groups; but these legends do not help us, since they assume the descent of mankind from the objects whose names they bear. But I think that we may safely go so far as to consider it very probable, if food animals and plants were totems in the earliest times, that magical practices might easily arise for the purpose of increasing the food supply of the pristine totemic groups. Such practices would, to use the words of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, as I understand them, be the primary function of such groups.

In connection with this, I may remark that the very great development of the magical ceremonies of Central Australian tribes, connected with the "primary" functions of such groups, appear to me to have arisen necessarily out of the climatic conditions of that part of Australia; while their absence in the tribes of South-Eastern Australia is due to the far more favourable conditions under which they have lived.