The second fundamental problem relating to rules of descent is that of the cause of the transition from matrilineal to patrilineal descent.  The subject needs to be discussed in detail for each particular area before general conclusions can be formulated; it is quite possible that the causes will be found to differ widely; for no general rule can be laid down as to the relations between matrilineal descent and other cultural conditions.

All that can be attempted here is an examination of the various elements in the problem so far as it affects Australia.  To this may be prefixed a further discussion of the origin of matrilineal descent with especial reference to Australian conditions.

It is commonly assumed that in a pure matrilineal community, the husband removes to the wife’s local group (matrilocal marriage), or if not that, that at any rate the authority in the family rests in the hands of the mother’s brothers, who are also the heirs to the exclusion of the children.  But of any such custom of removal there is but the very slenderest evidence in Australia.  According to Howitt it occurs occasionally in Victoria and among the Dieri; among the Wakelbura it is done only if a man elopes with a betrothed woman and the man to whom she was betrothed dies; among the Kuinmurbura it seems to have been a recognised thing for a man who married a woman of another tribe to remove, but in this case he took no part in intertribal warfare[13].  In all these cases, the Kurnai excepted, descent is reckoned in the female line.

If however Dr Howitt’s informant, who does not seem to have been particularly accurate in many cases, is to be relied on, the removal of the husband to the wife’s group is also found among the patrilineal Maryborough tribes, though only if the woman belonged to a distant tribelet, whatever that may be[14].  To this information is added the statement that in such cases the husband joined his wife’s tribe for purposes of hostilities also and that it has happened that a son has come into conflict with his father under these circumstances and endangered his life with full knowledge of what he was doing.  There is, it is true, no definite statement to the effect that children in these tribes take their totems from the father, but we may assume that it is the case.  If therefore the statement in question is accurate, it is a pretty clear proof of the break-up of the social system; for under no circumstances does the totem-kinsman, as a rule, violate the sacro-sanctity of his own flesh.  It cannot therefore be argued that the fact of removal in the Maryborough tribes is any very strong evidence of the primitive nature of the custom.  In the other tribes, on the other hand, it is distinctly stated that the practice prevails only when marriage takes place between members of two different tribes, and among the Wakelbura only exceptionally even when the wife is of an alien folk.  Whatever else the custom proves in these cases, it