Now, if I may venture to interpret the mind of Mr. John Fergus McLennan, I conceive that he regarded the totemic division as older than the ‘phratry’ or the ‘class’ bar, and he thought it the oldest traceable exogamous limit. Not to marry within the totem name (no male Emu to marry a female Emu) was, in Mr. McLennan’s opinion, the most archaic marriage law.[22] This appears from the words of Mr. McLennan’s brother, Mr. Donald McLennan.[23] He writes: ‘As the theory of the Origin of Exogamy took shape, and the facts connected reduced themselves to form in his mind, the conclusion was reached that the system conveniently called “Totemism” ... must have existed in rude societies, prior to the origin of Exogamy.[24] This carried back the origin of Totemism to a state of mind in which no idea of incest existed. From that condition my brother hoped to trace the progress of Totemism--necessarily a progress upwards--in connection with kinship and Exogamy. It may here be said that he had for a time a hypothesis of the origin of Totemism, but that he afterwards came to see that there were conclusive reasons against it.’ Meanwhile may we not, then, assume that, in Mr. McLennan’s opinion, the earliest traceable human aggregate within which matrimony was _legally_ forbidden was the totem kin, indicated by the totem name, the totem tabu, and the totem badge, or symbol--where it existed? We now see how heterogeneous elements came to exist in the tribe of locality, a puzzle to the friends of the theory of the Patriarchal Family. For the nature of totemism, _plus exogamy_ and _female descent_, is obviously such that under totemism, each family group even (each ‘fire circle’ of men, wives, and children), _must_ contain persons of different totems. The father and mother _must_ be of different totems (persons of the same totem not intermarrying), and the children must inherit the totem either of the father or of the mother.[25] When paternal kinship is not only recognised (as, in practical life, it always is), but becomes exclusive in its influence on customary law, and when an approach to the Patriarchal Family, with the power of the patriarch, is evolved, all the members of the family in all its branches will (if Totemism persists) have the same totem; derived from the father. Thus there will now be a _local_ totem group, a group mainly of the same totem name, as is practically the case in parts of Central Australia.[26]