[3] Suppose we take a group ranging in a given locality, and known to its neighbours as the Emu group. Let us also take a similar and similarly situated Kangaroo group. Let us suppose that each such group has raided for its wives among Opossum, Grub, Cat, and Dingo groups. By female descent, both the Emu and Kangaroo groups will contain persons of the Opossum, Grub, Cat, and Dingo groups. This being so a man of the Emu local group, named Grub by totem, might marry a woman of the Emu local group, by totem of descent an Opossum; and similarly in the Kangaroo group. But, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another case, 'the old prohibition', deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives (L'Année Sociologique, v. 107, note). Now 'the old prohibition' was that a man of the Emu group was not to marry a woman of the Emu group. That rule endures, though the Emu group now contains men and women of several distinct totem kins. To escape from the difficulty, by my theory, Emu local totem group makes connubium with Kangaroo local totem group. Any Emu man may marry any Kangaroo woman not of his own totem by descent. But this does not, automatically, throw Opossum and Grub into one, Cat and Dingo into another, of the two local totem groups, Emu and Kangaroo, now become phratries, with loss of their local character. For if a man, by phratry Emu, and by totem of descent Cat, marries a woman, by phratry Kangaroo, and by totem of descent Grub, their children, by female descent, are Kangaroo Grubs. Meanwhile, if a man, by phratry Kangaroo, and by totem Cat, marries a woman, by phratry Emu, and by totem Grub, their children are Emu Grubs. There are thus Grubs in both phratries, a thing that never occurs (except among the Arunta). Therefore the division of the totem kins, some into one phratry, others into the other, is not automatic. There might be a tendency, by way of making assurance doubly sure, for the totem kins to be assorted into the two phratries, but some kind of deliberate arrangement does seem necessary. The same necessity attends Dr. Durkheim's theory later criticised.
[4] See again Durkheim, in L'Année Sociologique, i. 47-57, on the superstition as to blood, and the totem as a sacred representative of the inviolable blood of the kindred. That superstition gives religious sanction to a pre-existing exogamous tendency.
[5] Totemism, p. 60 (1889).
[6] Totemism, p. 62.
[7] The people of New Britain group of islands are divided into two exogamous sets. The totems of these classes are two insects, but I incline to suppose that there are, or may have been, totem kins included within these totemic classes. Our informant, the Rev. B. Danks, regrets that he did not pay more attention to these matters. J. A. I. xviii. 281-294.
[8] On the other hand, among the Mohegans, I can admit that Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, and Great Turtle may be deliberate subdivisions of the Turtle totem, now a phratry, but even this need not necessarily be the case; the different species of turtles being quite capable of giving names to different totems. I would not deny the possibility of the occasional segmentation of a totem group—far from it—but I doubt whether great tribes originally (and, as it seems, deliberately) first bisected themselves, and then cut up the two main divisions.
[9] My italics.
[10] J. A. I., N.S. i. 278.
[11] Ibid. p. 282.
[12] Mr. Mathews counts thirty-four totems in the Dilbi, and as many in the Rupathin 'phratries.' Proc. Ray. Soc. N.S.W. xxxi. 157-158.