The theory of Herr Cunow[1] is in the first place opposed to the systems of all who regard the ‘phratries’ as divisions made in an original group, or horde, for purposes of exogamy. I have not observed that any of our writers have noticed the book of Herr Cunow. In his opinion, as was said earlier, authors err in confusing ‘phratries’ with ‘classes:’ ‘a phratry is not a class, and a class is not a phratry; these two sorts of bodies have been developed out of different antecedents, and have different tendencies. The two “primary divisions,” say Kroki and Kumite, are phratries, but are not classes in the same sense as the Ippai and Kumbo, Murri and Kubbi classes of the Kamilaroi’ (p. 24). Herr Cunow regards the ‘classes’ as in origin earlier[2] than the divisions of totem kin, or the ‘phratry’ divisions, and thinks that the ‘classes’ were originally non-intermarrying divisions based on seniority. They were devised or developed, not to prevent marriage between near kin, but between persons of different generations, or rather degrees of seniority. This is proved, he thinks, by the etymology of some of the names of the classes (about which we need much fuller information). Thus the word _Kubbi_ (Kamilaroi), already cited as a class name, is derived, he says, from _Kubbura_, ‘young, new,’ and originally designates a youth who has passed the initiatory ceremonies. Ridley’s vocabulary of the Kamilaroi tongue is the source for this fact. Kumbo, another class name, is the _Kombia_ or _Kumbia_, of the tribes on the Lower Murray river, and means ‘great,’ that is, ‘old.’ On the Lower Darling, the word is _gumboka_, _Kumbuka_; compare _Kumba_, _Kumbera_, ‘old woman,’ _Kumbeja_, ‘father.’ ‘Great’ and ‘old,’ ‘little’ and ‘young,’ are equivalent in sense. _Bonda_, a class name of the Kabi, means ‘new’ or ‘young,’ and the class-name Darawang, or Tarawang, is the Kabi word _darami_, ‘little,’ or ‘young.’ Obu, a class name, is the Queensland _jabu, jobu, jabbo bobu_, ‘father.’ Thus the class names, Herr Cunow holds, originally indicate divisions of youth and age in the ‘horde,’ by which term Herr Cunow understands a local set of from forty to sixty people, a local aggregate of several such ‘hordes’ being a ‘tribe’ (pp. 25-28). The fact of Australian attention to degrees of seniority is demonstrated by the stages of initiation, and by the various dues, of food gifts and so on, paid by the juniors to the seniors of the tribe: by the food which persons of different status in seniority may eat, and so forth. Indeed Dr. Roth has regarded the ‘classes’ as originally evolved to regulate the distribution of the food supply, and such regulations would, I think, be elements among other regulations of matrimonial and other rights, dependent on seniority. ‘What a man may eat at one stage is at another stage forbidden, and _vice versa_.’[3]