It is unnecessary to insist on the bewilderment, but the polemical mood in which our informants always approached the problem of relationship and family has had its unfortunate consequences. In the first place it is easy to see that these two groups of facts--individual relationship and group relationship--are treated by the writers as if they excluded each other, or at least as if one of them were gradually encroaching upon the other. Whereas it is quite possible that both individual and group relationship might exist side by side, originating from different sources, and expressing two different sets of social relationships. In the second place, the polemical attitude of our best informants (Howitt, and Spencer and Gillen) against individual relationship resulted in their giving very meagre information about the individual family. As a matter of fact, in all theoretical passages of works devoted to the social organization of the Australian tribes, the individual family is passed over in absolute silence.[16] As this unit obviously plays a foremost part in the social life of Australian tribes, I submit it is quite justifiable that in these pages some information about this unit should be gathered and its importance brought out. Special attention has been devoted to the facts of actual family life. [16] As _e. g._ in the general treatises of Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr., Nor. Tr._, Howitt's _Nat. Tr._, Howitt and Fison, _K.K. Idem_ in _J.A.J._, xii. p. 33. Howitt in _Trans. R.S.V._, p. 100, and in _Smithsonian Reports_, p. 79. To sum up, it may be said that the defects in our information as to the individual family, and the contradiction and confusion surrounding it, do of themselves justify an examination of this institution. These contradictions are due probably not to any intrinsic reasons, but to certain theoretical postulates and axioms adopted by some of our informants. And as the exact description of actual facts seems to suffer therefrom, a revision of the theoretical side of the problem, as well as a collection of evidence from a somewhat extensive number of sources appears advisable.