This is but a modern instance of how persistent the ancient custom has been. As soon as sedentary life and settled ownership of property took the place of nomadic life and communal ownership, mother-right or matriarchy passed gradually into patriarchy. It is curious to know that among the American Indians at the time they were discovered one could find all degrees of this transition. We must be careful, too, to discriminate between the tribe and the clan, or gens, for all savage tribes are exogamous with respect to the clans and endogamous with respect to the tribes. When the people develop the tendency to marriage within the tribe, it is evident that they have passed out of the earlier stages of clan grouping into the stage of property grouping. Marrying in the tribes was necessary, in order, as we might put it, to "keep the money in the family." Among many of the lowest as well of the highest civilization, the practice is against marrying a girl who is akin; and it is always a subject of humor when a young woman in our own country marries without changing her name, a quiet recognition of the old practice of the exogamous marriage between clan members. Clothing for warmth or protection is not worn by Australian women; even the apron is not universal. The sense of beauty, however, has been awakened in these savage breasts, and expresses itself in pretty headbands, necklaces, and breast ornaments of seeds, teeth, and strings colored with ochre. The men, too, are but little better attired; but one indispensable article of their costumes must not be omitted in this connection, namely, the knout, or coil of twine, with which they thrash the women. The home of the Australian woman, where she and her co-wives and their children live, is nothing more than a brush shelter, so faced as to protect the occupants from the prevailing wind. In front of this, or under it, they work, eat, sleep, and hold social intercourse. In the morning, they go forth with their digging sticks and wooden troughs to gather small animals. They take no thought of what they shall eat, the problem being to have anything to eat. When the men hunt the small kangaroo, the women surround the game and drive it toward the ambush. Every edible thing is known and is used for food. The women are the gleaners also, gathering large quantities of seeds, throwing them from one trough to another so that the wind may blow away the chaff, grinding them on one stone with another, and cooking in hot ashes the dough made from the meal. The cooking of flesh food is done by men, as that prepared by females may not be eaten by them; the women attend to the vegetable diet. In many places, females over a certain age take their meals apart; this rule, however, is not uniform.