Among these different peoples, all the men of the tribe on the one hand, and all the women on the other, to whatever special clan they may belong, form, as it were, two distinct and even antagonistic societies. Now each of these two sexual corporations believes that it is united by mystical bonds to a determined animal. Among the Kurnai, all the men think they are brothers, as it were, of the emu-wren (Yeer[)u]ng), all the women, that they are as sisters of the linnet (Djeetg[)u]n); all the men are Yeer[)u]ng and all the women are Djeetg[)u]n. Among the Wotjobaluk and the Wurunjerri, it is the bat and the _nightjar_ (a species of screech-owl) respectively who take this rôle. In other tribes, the woodpecker is substituted for the _nightjar_. Each sex regards the animal to which it is thus related as a sort of protector which must be treated with the greatest regard; it is also forbidden to kill and eat it.[544] Thus this protecting animal plays the same part in relation to the sexual society that the totem of the clan plays to this latter group. So the expression sexual totemism, which we borrow from Frazer,[545] is justified. This new sort of totem resembles that of the clan particularly in that it, too, is collective; it belongs to all the people of one sex indiscriminately. It also resembles this form in that it implies a relationship of descent and consanguinity between the animal patron and the corresponding sex: among the Kurnai, all the men are believed to be descended from Yeer[)u]ng and all the women from Djeetg[)u]n.[546] The first observer to point out this curious institution described it, in 1834, in the following terms: "Tilmun, a little bird the size of a thrush (it is a sort of woodpecker), is supposed by the women to be the first maker of women. These birds are held in veneration by the women only."[547] So it was a great ancestor. But in other ways, this same totem resembles the individual totem. In fact, it is believed that each member of a sexual group is personally united to a determined individual of the corresponding animal species. The two lives are so closely associated that the death of the animal brings about that of the man. "The life of a bat," say the Wotjobaluk, "is the life of a man."[548] That is why each sex not only respects its own totem, but forces the members of the other to do so as well. Every violation of this interdiction gives rise to actual bloody battles between the men and the women.[549]