more immediately connected with property and children and the marriage of its female members. Those who are liable to the obligations of the law of blood revenge in any particular case must be identified, and, as they can hardly comprise all the members of the gens, we must suppose them to be restricted to the smaller group consisting of near blood relations. Judging from what we know of the habits of the Australian aborigines in relation to the _lex talionis_, we cannot doubt that the persons subject to retaliation in any particular case are well defined. The example of the Polynesian Islanders, who are said not to have risen to the conception of the gens, shows that before this was developed, not only was the _lex talionis_ recognised, but the law of marriage and the rights of parents over their children were fully established. These are, therefore, not dependent on the gens, but are incidental to a simpler group of blood relations—that on which the gens itself is based. The idea of “brotherhood” is at the foundation of all these early social organisations. Mr. Morgan says, in relation to the Iroquois _phratry_, that “the phratry is a brotherhood, as the term imports, and a natural growth from the organisation into gentes. It is an organic union or association of two or more gentes of the same tribe for certain common objects. These gentes were usually such as had been formed by the segmentation of an original gens.”[285] So also, a gens forms a fraternal association, as it consists of “a body of consanguinei descended from the same common ancestor, distinguished by a gentile name, and bound together by affinities of blood.”[286] If we trace the ascent until we come to the common ancestor, we shall have a group of kinsmen who compose the simplest form of “brotherhood,” that of a parent and his or her children. Originally this would be a mother and her daughters, as when the sons formed marriage associations the daughters only and their children would be left under the parental roof. It is evident, therefore, that the primitive family cannot have originated within the gens or clan. On the contrary, the clan was based on the family or group of kinsmen, without which it could not have existed. Moreover, it by no means follows that, because the common ancestor of the members of the gens or clan was a female, the primitive group of kinsmen had not a male as well as a female head. Considered as a “fraternal association,” the father may have been excluded, but for the purposes of the brotherhood it was of no importance whether paternity was certain or uncertain. The result would have been the same in either case. For other than brotherhood purposes kinship to the father may have been fully recognised. The obligations of the _lex talionis_, the right to property, and the control of children in marriage, may have concerned only the kinsmen by the mother’s side, but those on the father’s side may have been equally affected by the law of marriage.