3o8 Australian Marriage Customs. wives), of 4 as sisters. If such a tribe were to practise pirrauru a certain number of noa women (who here number 36) become accessory spouses to the man ; we may take their number at 8, and show the pirrauru circle by shading the squares indicating the women in question. Finally he has his individual wife, shown here by a black square. Moiety A. Moiety B. c-
A
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i ^ y
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small squares =?ioa group.
8 shaded squares =/z>>'<T?<:r?< group, black square = individual spouse. I lay special stress upon the fact that the ttoa group is wider than the pirrmtrti group, and that all noa women do not in fact become the pirrauru of any single man, nor all noa men the pirrauru of any individual woman. I now turn to Dr. Howitt's paper. The first point to which I wish to call attention is Dr. Howitt's failure to formulate a consistent theory. On p. 171 he asserts that Avhat I call "modified pro- miscuity" must have preceded the creation of the noa group, that is to say that there was no stage intermediate between absolute promiscuity and the pirrauru marriage
