We may now renew our affirmation that paternal incest as a custom, is no longer generally recognised anywhere. The primitive unquestioned marital right in incest is quite unknown. It has disappeared, and so completely have even traces of its past general occurrence faded, that doubts of the reality of the fact may be pardonably entertained. The question is of importance in connection with our thesis, for as may be seen the whole theory of the primal law is based on the idea of its primitive universal prevalence. We hope, however, to have shown the inherent possibility of the fact as being a habit common to all the mammalia--and it has seemed against reason to suppose that man’s ancestor, whilst in the animal stage, would be an exception to so general a rule. Our further argument has adduced circumstances in favour of a final decay so complete that oblivion could not but follow. Perhaps not the least remarkable fact to the anthropologist in connection with its life and death, is that only as between a father and a daughter, of all blood relationships, do we find no trace among actual peoples of any law in Avoidance. The fact is significant, as we may thus surmise that the process of decay was very long delayed, in fact to a time when such inchoate form of law as Avoidance had become an archaism, or until general progress had rendered any law unnecessary. [Footnote 1: As to group marriage the editor cannot follow Mr. Atkinson.] [Footnote 2: I have here slightly altered Mr. Atkinson’s terminology. As the passage stands in his manuscript he confuses totem kins with the Australian intermarrying ‘classes.’ In his manuscript the passage runs thus: ‘In later days they’ (the outside mates) ‘will be found as the male members of a certain class generation in one group’ (by which he means a ‘class,’ say Ippai, in a ‘phratry,’ say Dilbi) ‘and, _de facto,_ eligible in group marriage with all and certain females of the _same_ category as regards birth in another group.’ Here he obviously should have written ‘eligible in marriage with all females of the _corresponding_ category in the other “phratry” of an all-embracing tribe.’ ‘As indeed with actual Australians where, by right of birth alone, each totem group contains the natural born husbands and wives of another totem group.’ This is not the case: men of one totem kin are not compelled to take wives from one other totem kin; but men of one ‘class’ must take wives of one other ‘class,’ and men of one ‘phratry’ must take wives out of the other ‘phratry.’. To avoid confusion I have, in the text, inserted the correct terminology.--A. L.] [Footnote 3: All the younger generation of females would be reserved for themselves, and thus not only their own daughters, but the daughters of their brothers-in-law, who, as of the same generation, were all classed together as sisters.] [Footnote 4: These groups would be phratries, or the germs of phratries.--A. L.]