Now, under these circumstances, it is not, perhaps, wonderful that the relationships within a group should be decidedly close.  Indeed, the correct thing is for the children of a brother and sister to marry; though not, it would seem, for the children of two brothers or of two sisters.  And yet there is no approach to promiscuity, but, on the contrary, a very strict monogamy, infidelities being as rare as they are deeply resented.  That they had clans of some sort was, indeed, known to Professor Hobhouse and to the authorities whom he follows; but these clans are dismissed as having but the slightest organization and very few functions.  An entirely new light, however, has been thrown on the meaning of this clan-system by the recent researches of Dr. and Mrs. Seligmann.  It now turns out that some of the Veddas are exogamous—­that is to say, are obliged by custom to marry outside their own clan—­though others are not.  The question then arises, Which, for the Veddas, is the older system, marrying-out or marrying-in?  Seeing what a miserable remnant the Veddas are, I cannot but believe that we have here the case of a formerly exogamous people, groups of which have been forced to marry-in, simply because the alternative was not to marry at all.  Of course, it is possible to argue that in so doing they merely reverted to what was once everywhere the primeval condition of man.  But at this point historical science tails off into mere guesswork.

* * * * *

We reach relatively firm ground, on the other hand, when we pass on to consider the social organization of such exogamous and totemic peoples as the natives of Australia.  The only trouble here is that the subject is too vast and complicated to permit of a handling at once summary and simple.  Perhaps the most useful thing that can be done for the reader in a short space is to provide him with a few elementary distinctions, applying not only to the Australians, but more or less to totemic societies in general.  With the help of these he may proceed to grapple for himself with the mass of highly interesting but bewildering details concerning social organization to be found in any of the leading first-hand authorities.  For instance, for Australia he can do no better than consult the two fascinating works of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen on the Central tribes, or the no less illuminating volume of Howitt on the natives of the South-eastern region; whilst for North America there are many excellent monographs to choose from amongst those issued by the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution.  Or, if he is content to allow some one else to collect the material for him, his best plan will be to consult Dr. Frazer’s monumental treatise, Totemism and Exogamy, which epitomizes the known facts for the whole wide world, as surveyed region by region.