[Footnote 48: Report of _American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1893-1894, p. 213 et seq.] [Footnote 49: _Thirteenth Report of the Committee of Devonshire Folk-Lore_, Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, 1895, xxvii. 61-74.] [Footnote 50: Many other animal and vegetable names--totem names in America, village names in England--have already been cited. See p. 170.] CHAPTER IX THE MELANESIAN SYSTEMS We have, fortunately, an opportunity in Melanesia of studying, as it seems, the Australian marriage system in a state of decay.[1] The institutions of Melanesia bear every note of being Australian institutions, decadent, dislocated, contaminated and partially obliterated. Starting from New Guinea, we find a long archipelago sloping down, away from the east side of Australia, towards the Fiji Islands. The archipelago consists mainly, in the order given, of New Ireland, New Britain, the Solomon Group, Banks Island, the New Hebrides, Loyalty Island, and New Caledonia. The inhabitants are a fusion of many oceanic elements, and are much more advanced in culture than the natives of Australia: they have chiefs, whose office tends to be hereditary (and in one place, Saa, _is_ hereditary), in the male line, the father handing on to the son his magical acquirements and properties, and leaving to him his wealth, as far as he may. This is not very far, as, curious to say, descent in the female line is generally prevalent. Wealth is both real and personal: landed property consisting (1) of Town Lots, (2) of Gardens (ἓρκος), (3) of the Waste (‘the Bush’). The ‘town lots’ and gardens pass by inheritance; the possessor being only ‘possessor,’ not proprietor, and real property passing in the female line, where that line still prevails. The reclaiming of land from the Waste tends, however, to direct property into the male line, which, except in certain districts, is not dominant. Money is divided, on a death, among brothers, nephews--and sons, ‘if they can get it’--the money being the native shell currency. The tendency towards the substitution, as heirs, of a man’s sons for his sister’s sons, is powerful.[2]