It is by no means improbable that under the influence of the custom of exchanging sisters there may be a tendency for the control of the kin in this respect to diminish; in fact the Boulia example is only explicable on this hypothesis.  At the same time we cannot overlook the fact that elopement, or real marriage by capture, as distinguished from formal abduction, would, so far as we can see, have a similar effect, and the rise of the custom of exchange of sisters would in that case tend to re-establish rather than weaken the power of the woman’s kin, at any rate in the first instance.

However this may be, the woman’s kin exercises, prima facie, some kind of protectorship.  At the present day the kinship may be matrilineal or patrilineal without affecting their right.  But if, before kinship was reckoned at all, this protectorship were exercised for the benefit of the children, we clearly have a possible cause of matriliny.

For a discussion of the question of the inheritance of the deceased’s wife by his brother we have more facts at our disposal.  As a matter of fact it is a not infrequent custom in Australia for the widow to pass to the deceased husband’s brother[17]; or if she does not become his wife, he decides to whom she shall be allotted[18].  In no case do the woman’s kin seem to have a voice in the selection of her new husband.  On the whole therefore the proprietary rights found in the Boulia district seem to be the product of exceptional local conditions.  If this is so, it is clear that in the matter of potestas the rights of the woman’s kin are now absolutely restricted to protecting her from a death which she has not according to native law deserved and to avenging such a death when it is inflicted by the husband.

The so-called levirate, or right of succession to the widow, is clearly of much importance, so far as questions of dominion are concerned; but as regards the problems of descent the evidence is less easily interpreted.  It has sometimes been assumed that the succession of the brother and not the son is a mark of matriliny; but it is clear that where the right of appropriating the widow is concerned, this is very far from being the case, for the simple reason that the real matria potestas would put her at the disposal of the kin from whom she originally came; on the other hand, inasmuch as the son is naturally debarred from marrying his own mother or his tribal mother, who commonly belongs to a class into which he does not marry, there might easily arise in a purely patripotestal and patrilineal tribe a custom of handing over the widow to the father’s brother.