On the other hand, the theory that these customs are evidences of original sexual communism has gained support from the recent researches of Spencer and Gillen in their very able and detailed book on the _Native Tribes of Central Australia_. Among these aborigines, the authors declare, "so far as marital relations ... are concerned, we find that whilst there is individual marriage, there are, in actual practice, occasions on which the relations are of a much wider nature. We have, indeed, in this respect three very distinct series of relationships." First we find the present "normal condition of individual marriage with the occasional existence of marital relations between the individual wife and other men of the same group as that to which her husband belongs, and the occasional existence also of still wider marital relations;" secondly "we have evidence of the existence at a prior time of actual group marriage;" and in the third place "we have evidence of the existence at a still earlier time of still wider marital relations."[147] [147] The first series of relationships is seen in the Arunta tribe, where "no man will lend his wife to anyone who does not belong to the particular group with which it is lawful for her to have marital relations--she is, in fact, only lent to a man whom she calls _Unwana_, just as she calls her own husband, and though this may undoubtedly be spoken of as an act of hospitality, it may with equal justice be regarded as evidence of the very clear recognition of group relationship, and as evidence also in favor of the former existence of group marriage." A native, it is true, will sometimes lend his wife "as an act of hospitality to a white man; but this has nothing to do with the lending of wives which has just been dealt with." It "does not imply the infringement of any custom." The second relationship in the series named is of a public nature, and it is strictly regulated by custom. It consists in the defloration of a girl just before her marriage by certain men who have access to her in a definite order. These men belong to forbidden groups; that is, groups into which the woman may not marry. "The ceremonies in question are of the nature of those which Sir John Lubbock has described as indicative of expiation for marriage;" and they may be regarded as "rudimentary customs" pointing back to a stage of wider marital rights than those which now exist in these tribes. The third relationship is the license allowed on "occasions when a large number of men and women are gathered together to perform certain corrobborees," the more important gatherings lasting perhaps "ten days or a fortnight." Every day "two or three women are told off to attend at the corrobboree ground, and, with the exception of men who stand in the relation to them of actual father, brother, or son, they are, for the time being, common property to all the men