Perhaps Mr Lang’s theory hardly accounts for the fact that eaglehawk and crow figure not only as phratry names but also in the myths and rites.  It is not apparent why eaglehawk and crow groups should take the lead and give their names to the phratries unless it was as contrasted colours; on the other hand, if they were selected as the names from among a number of others this difficulty vanishes, but then we do not see why these names are not more widely found, unless indeed the untranslated names mean eaglehawk and crow; but possibly all express a contrast of some sort.

On the whole, however, it may be said that Mr Lang’s theory holds the field.  Not only is it internally consistent, which cannot be affirmed of the reformation theory, but it colligates the facts far better.  This may be illustrated by a single point.

On the reformation theory, unaccompanied, as it is, by any hypothesis of borrowing of phratry names, we should prima facie find the latter, where they are translateable, to be those of the animals which are most frequently found as totems.  Now in the area covered by Dr Howitt’s recent work, omitting those tribes for which our lists of totems are admittedly not complete, we find that emu, kangaroo, snake, eaglehawk, and iguana are found as totems in about two-thirds of the cases; then, after a long interval, come wallaby and crow, less than half as often, with opossum rather more frequently, in half the total number.  But it is clearly outside the bounds of probability that four of the commonest totems should not give their names, so far as is known, to phratries, while eaglehawk recurs five, crow six, and cockatoo three times, the two latter in one case in a remote area.  Not only so, but the opposition between the phratry names—­black and white or the like—­is unintelligible, if, as on Dr Durkheim’s theory, the phratries are simply the elementary totem groups which intermarried and threw off secondary totem kins.  But criticism of other theories opens a wide field, into which it is best not to diverge.

On the development theory the phratries came into existence perhaps as the result of the persistence of an old custom of exogamy, non-moral in its inception, or, it may be, as a result of the rise of totemic tabus.  The reformation theory, on the other hand, makes the conscious attainment of a better state of society the object of the institution of a dichotomous organisation.  It will therefore be well to see what results in practice from the phratriac organisation.

In the two-phratry area (other rules, which usually exist, apart) it is impossible for children of the same mother or father, or of sisters or of brothers, to marry, nor can one of the parents, either mother or father, according to the rule of descent, take her or his own child in marriage.  Now if the object of the reformation was to prevent parents from marrying children, it was clearly not attained.  If, on the other hand, it was intended to prevent children of the same mother or father from intermarrying, the result could have been attained far more simply, either by direct prohibition, such as is found in other cases, or by the institution of totemic exogamy, which, in the view of some authorities, already existed, and consequently made the phratry superfluous.