The girl-child born in Australia has little care beyond what is necessary to preserve her life. The almost deserted mother is placed apart in a brush shelter and is attended by some old woman of her clan. The birthplace of the little girl is amid the greatest squalor. On rare occasions mothers practise infanticide. The child is killed as soon as born, in the belief (in the words of Nicodemus) that it can enter a second time into the mother's womb and be reborn. As infants are suckled several years, the chief cause of this unnatural act is the inability of the mother to add another ounce to life's burdens. Being considered uncanny, twins are immediately killed; and once in a while a healthy child meets with a like fate, in order that its vigor may go into a weaker one. The baby's name is inherited from her mother, or perhaps from her father. It is merely a class title, for every tribe in Australia is separated into classes with names. If descent be in the female line, then everyone in a class has the same name from the mothers; if it be in the male line, all whose fathers are in the same class are named alike. In all Australia there is no such title as "mother," in our sense of the word. Of the girl-child here considered, there are as many mothers as there are females in that class belonging to the same generation. If the reader were an Australian girl, she would, then, have several or many mothers; there would be her own mother, her maternal aunts, and all collateral female kin of that generation and of the mother's class. For example, suppose a tribe in which the two moieties were named Brown and Smith. Every Brown man would have to marry a Smith woman and vice versa. A Smith would not and dare not marry a Smith, or a Brown marry a Brown. Now, if the mother-right prevailed, all the children of the Brown mothers would be Browns, of the Smith mothers would be Smiths; but if father-right prevailed, then all the children of Brown mothers would be Smiths, and those of the Smith mothers would be Browns. The marriage tie is so loose in Australia that the family exists only in the group, and the little girl is not "Miss Brown," but a Brown--one of the Browns. The principle is as here stated, but the practice in detail is most bewildering. The little newborn girl is not merely "Miss S." or "Miss B." Her tribe, with its two moieties or classes, may have six totems in each. In that case, her father and her mother will have totem names. Take the Urabrinna tribe with its two classes, Matthurie and Kirarwa. If the father be a Dingo Matthurie and the mother be a Water Hen Kirarwa, our little girl will bear her mother's name, so will all other girls of Water Hen mothers and, also, their children to remotest posterity. The girls of this generation are, in fact, sisters and look upon the whole generation that gave them birth as a class of mothers; it is the best they can do.