Mr. Hill Tout has evolved a theory out of the customs of the aborigines of British Columbia, among whom ‘the clan totems are a development of the personal or individual totem or tutelar spirit.’ The Salish tribes, in fact, seek for ‘sulia, or tutelar spirits,’ and these ‘gave rise to the personal totem,’ answering to _manitu, nyarong, nagual_, and so forth. ‘From the personal and family crest is but a step to the clan crest.’ Unluckily, with descent in the female line, the step cannot be taken. Mr. Hill Tout takes a village-inhabiting tribe, a tribe of village communities, as one in which Totemism is only nascent. ‘The village community apparently formed the original unit of organisation.’ But the Australians, who have not come within measurable distance of the village community, have already the organisation of the totem kin. Interesting as is Mr. Hill Tout’s account of the Salish Indians, we need not dwell longer on an hypothesis which makes village communities prior to the evolution of Totemism. What he means by saying that ‘the _gens_ has developed into the clan,’ I am unable to conjecture. The school of Major Powell use ‘_gens_’ of a totem kin with male, ‘clan’ of a totem kin with female descent. Mr. Hill Tout cannot mean that male descent is being converted into descent in the female line? As he writes of ‘a four-clan system, each clan being made up of groups of _gentes_,’ he may take a ‘clan’ to signify what is usually called a ‘phratry.’[33] MESSRS. HOSE AND MCDOUGALL