t the prohibition of this intercourse
was an accomplished fact at the time of its institution.

The system of two classes is not only found near Mount Gambier in South
Australia, but also farther east along Darling River, and in the
northeast of Queensland. It is, consequently, widespread. It excludes
only marriage between brothers and sisters, between brothers' children
and between sisters' children of the mother's side, because these belong
to the same class; but the children of a sister can marry those of a
brother and vice versa. A further step for preventing inbreeding is
found among the Kamilaroi on the Darling River in New South Wales, where
the two original classes are split into four, and every one of these is
married as a whole to a certain other class. The first two classes are
husbands and wives by birth. According to the place of the mother in the
first or second class, the children belong to the third and fourth. The
children of these two classes, who are also married to one another,
again belong to the first and second class. So that a certain generation
belongs to the first and second class, the next to the third and fourth
and the following again to the first and second. Hence the children of
natural brothers and sisters (on the mother's side) cannot marry one
another, but their grandchildren can do so. This peculiarly complicated
order of things is still more entangled by the inoculation--evidently at
a later stage--with maternal law gentes. But we cannot discuss this
further. Enough, the desire to prevent inbreeding again and again
demands recognition, but feeling its way quite spontaneously, without a
clear conception of the goal.

The group marriage is represented in Australia by class marriage, i. e.,
mass marriage of a whole class of men frequently scattered over the
whole breadth of the continent to an equally widespread class of women.
A close view of this group marriage does not offer quite such a horrible
spectacle as the philistine imagination accustomed to brothel conditions
generally pictures to itself. On the contrary, long years passed, before
its existence was even suspected, and quite recently it is once more
denied. To the casual observer it makes the impression of a loose
monogamy and in certain places of polygamy, with occasional breach of
faith. Years are required before one can discover, like Fison and
Howitt, the law regulating these marital conditions that rather appeal
in their