Did totemic divisions already exist in ‘the undivided commune’? If so, the commune was not undivided! Or were totem names given, nobody knows why, to the two phratries at the time when the ‘bisection’ of the commune was made? Did the legislator send half the horde to the right, crying, ‘You are sheep,’ and half to the left, saying, ‘You are goats,’--or rather, say, Emus and Kangaroos? This is not easily thinkable. But, if this was done, whence came the other totem kins, often numerous, within each phratry? Mr. Fison says that the totem kins (or ‘gentes’) ‘arose out of two primary divisions, by an orderly process of evolution, such as might be expected from the forces at work,’ and ‘we have seen how’ the phratries subdivided ‘into other subdivisions, distinguished by totems.’[13] But, alas, I have seen nothing of the sort! Mr. Fison has merely asserted the fact. ‘The totems affect the intersexual regulations ... by narrowing the range of matrimonial selection.’[14] Here would be a reason for the evolution of these totem kins. But this added restriction is exactly what (given phratries) the totems do not effect. There are so many totems in each phratry, but as the same totem (except among the Arunta and similarly disorganised tribes) never occurs in both phratries, the range of sexual selection is thus not more restricted by the totem than by the phratry. The members of each phratry may not intermarry, and all persons of their totem are in their phratry and so are not marriageable to them. They would all be exactly as exogamous as they are, if there were no totem rules, nothing but phratry rules. Thus the totems cannot be later deliberate segmentations of the phratry, for additional exogamous purposes, because they serve no such purpose, except where, among the Kamilaroi, a man may marry in his phratry, if he marries out of his totem. But that is a peculiarity. Mr. Mathews writes, ‘Under the group’ (phratry) ‘laws it is impossible for a Dilbi or Kupathin’ (phratry names of the Kamilaroi) ‘to marry a woman bearing the same totem name as himself, for the reason that such a totem does not exist in the division’ (phratry) ‘from which he is bound to select his wife. But when persons of the same group’ (phratry) ‘were permitted to marry each other, it became necessary to promulgate a law prohibiting marriage between persons of the same totem.’[15] But there were totems before that novelty of marriage within the phratry, and why were they there? Moreover, under phratry laws it was already the rule that no man could marry a woman of his own totem. Obviously we are not told how the totem kins arose out of the phratries, ‘by an orderly process of evolution such as might be expected from the forces at work.’ One sees no reason at all for the rise of totem kins within the phratry, itself, by Mr. Fison’s theory, originally totemic.