My own guess admits the possibility of this cause of giving plant and animal names to groups, among other causes. But I doubt if this was a common cause. In Australia, everything that can be eaten _is_ eaten by all the natives of a given area, each kindred having only a tendency to spare its own totem, while certain other tabus on foods exist. In this condition of affairs, very few groups could have a notable _special_ variety of food, except in the case of certain fruits, grass-seeds, and insects. For these articles the season is almost as brief as the season of the mayfly or the grannom. ‘When fruits is in, cats is out,’ as the pieman said to the young lady. During the rest of the year, all the groups in a large area will be living on the same large variety of reptiles, roots, animals such as rats and lizards, birds and so forth. It does not seem probable that, except as between Sea and Bush parts of a tribe, there could be much specialisation in matters of diet, during the greater part of the year. Therefore, I do not think that the derivation of totem names from special articles of food can ever have been common. But local knowledge is necessary on this point. Are the totem groups of Australia settled on lands peculiarly notable for the plants and animals whose names they bear? If so, that circumstance may account for the totem names of each group, and--granting that the origin of the names is long ago forgotten, and that native speculation has explained the names by myths--the rest is easy. It will appear, when we come to my conjecture, that it varies from Mr. Haddon’s only on one point. We both begin with plant and animal names given to the various groups, _from without_. We then suppose (or, at least, I suppose) the origin of the names to be forgotten, and a connection to be established between the groups and their name-giving objects, a connection which is explained by myths, while belief in these gives rise to corresponding behaviour: respect for the totem, and for his human kinsfolk. The only difference is that my theory suggests several sources of the names: while Mr. Haddon offers only one source, special articles of food and barter. Kindreds, to be sure, are now named, not from what they eat (scores of things), but from the one thing which (as a kindred) they do not eat. But this, when once the myths of kinship with the totem arose, might be a later development, arising out of the myth. In essentials, my conjecture appears to be in harmony with Mr. Haddon’s--the two, of course, were independently evolved.