hypothesis, we revert to the case where the local group (a number of aggregated families) possesses the actual right of use of the land, the individuals being only formal landlords of their parcels. If we accept, on the other hand, the view that single families were in a purely economic and legal sense owner of their own tract of land, _i. e._ that they enjoyed the _usum fructum_ of the latter for themselves, and that exclusively,[454] then we must also believe that the families lived scattered, and assembled only in exceptional cases. This consequence is important. But we see easily that although it is inevitable, supposing actual land ownership in single families, still the latter state of thing is not a necessary condition of it. Even when land is invested in the group, single families may live scattered (compare below). Claims to land by individuals and families in the Northwestern Central Queensland tribes were also based on ideas of a magico-religious character, being probably a mere magical connection of an individual or family with a portion of the country. (Compare the statement from _North Queensland Ethnography_.) [452] This mystic character of some individual claims to a particular tract of country appears also from Roth's statement, and from a passage of Oldfield (_loc. cit._, p. 252). "Every male is bound to visit the place of his nativity three times a year." But this writer could not ascertain the purpose of it. [453] Compare Grey, ii. p. 233, and the letter of G. S. Lang quoted by him therein. It appears that both these writers were to a certain extent inspired by a humanitarian tendency, namely to show that the Australian aborigines were not quite without ideas of property in land, and that they were wronged by the white settlers, and thus deserved compensation for the loss of their hunting-grounds. The letter mentioned was written to some humanitarian society. We may, therefore, still more distrust these statements. We have seen that the idea of possession of land, of an exclusive right to use a certain tract of country, was well known to our aborigines, but that they conceived of it as vested in a group, not in individuals. [454] It is well to remember that there cannot be drawn a sharp line of distinction between a "family" and a "local group"; moreover, in the use of these terms our authorities are mostly careless and indiscriminate. As to the individual possession of land, it has been pointed out in connection with Howitt's statement on the Wurunjerri, that the individual rights of some influential man (headman) might be the expression of the rights of his local group.