As to the first question, we must remember that the origin and determining causes of totemism are still unknown. Mr. M'Lennan's theory of the origin of totemism has never been published.[222] It may be said without indiscretion that Mr. M'Lennan once thought totemism arose at a period when ideas of kinship scarcely existed at all. 'Men only thought of marking one off from another,' as Garcilasso de la Vega says: the totem was but a badge worn by all the persons who found themselves existing in close relations; perhaps in the same cave or set of caves. People united by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship not yet brought into explicit consciousness, might mark themselves by a badge, and might thence derive a name, and, later, might invent a myth of their descent from the object which the badge represented. I do not know whether it has been observed that the totems are, as a rule, objects which may be easily drawn or tattooed, and still more easily indicated in gesture-language. Some interesting facts will be found in the _First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, p. 458 (Washington, 1881). Here we read how the 'Crow' tribe is indicated in sign-language by 'the hands held out on each side, striking the air in the manner of flying.' The Bunaks (another bird tribe) are indicated by an imitation of the cry of the bird. In mentioning the Snakes, the hand imitates the crawling motion of the serpent, and the fingers pointed up behind the ear denote the Wolves. Plainly names of the totem sort are well suited to the convenience of savages, who converse much in gesture-language. Above all, the very nature of totemism shows that it took its present shape at a time when men, animals, and plants were conceived of as physically akin; when names were handed on through the female line; when exogamy was the rule of marriage, and when the family theoretically included all persons bearing the same family name, that is, all who claimed kindred with the same plant, animal, or object, whether the persons are really akin or not. These ideas and customs are not the ideas natural to men organised in the patriarchal family.