regular supply of food and thus does
away with the necessity for magic.[822] Possibly, also, this climatic
feature may account for the stricter rule of prohibition mentioned
above; as the rule is sometimes relaxed when it is hard to get food, so,
on the other hand, it may be strictly enforced when food is plentiful.

+471+. Still a different situation appears in the southeastern part of
the continent (New South Wales and Victoria)--several prominent features
of the Central system are absent. The Dieri clans bear the names of
their totems, from which also they think themselves descended, but they
eat them freely. Some adjacent tribes eat them only at a pinch, others
refrain from them. The clans of the Narrinyeri are mostly localized, and
the clan-names are not now those of the totems;[823] the totems are
eaten. The Kurnai show the greatest divergence from the ordinary
type--they have neither totemic clans nor exogamous classes; their rule
of exogamy relates to districts. Throughout the southeast the conduct of
magical economic ceremonies by clans, every clan being responsible for
its own totem, seems not to exist.

+472+. In certain tribes (the Wotjoballuk, the Yuin, the Kurnai, and
others) there are sex-patrons, animals intimately related to all the
males or all the females of the tribe; the belief is said to be that the
life of any individual of the animal group is the life of a man or a
woman, and neither sex group will kill its patron animal. So far as
regards the conception of identity with the animal and reverence for it,
the institution agrees with the usual totemic type; but since it is not
connected with clans, some such designation for the animal as "patron"
or "guardian" is to be preferred to "totem."[824] Such animals,
protectors of sexes, are of rare occurrence, having been certainly found
so far only in Southeast Australia, and they occur in a body of tribes
that show a disposition to discard the clan constitution. In this region
individual men also sometimes have animal guardians, so that a general
tendency toward individualism may be recognized. It is not unnatural to
connect this tendency with the fertility of the south coast, which may
weaken the clan organization. The organization by sex is a singular
phenomenon, of the history of which there are no records. It is
doubtless a special development of the widespread separation of the
sexes, combined with an increasing recognition of the property rights
a