Unfortunately the other authors do not give anything approaching Spencer and Gillen's full account of burial and mourning. In particular, if there is any description, the actual and tribal relatives are not differentiated. All that I have adduced here from Spencer and Gillen refers to the actual widow. A short remark of Roth may be quoted: "In the Boulia district when a man dies, his nearer relatives have special mourning performances. These nearer relatives, in the case of an adult male, are considered to be the _wife_ and his brother and sisters by the same mother, not his father or mother; with an adult woman, only the brothers and sisters by the same mother."[228] Amongst the Dieri, "a widow is not permitted to speak until the whole of the white clay which forms her 'mourning' has come off without assistance" (perhaps some months).[229] There is also a statement about the husband's mourning. Amongst the Victorian tribes, "when a married woman dies and her body is burned, the husband puts her pounded calcined bones into a little opossum skin bag, which he carries in front of his chest until he marries again, or until the bag is worn out." [228] Roth, p. 164. [229] Howitt, p. 724. To sum up, it may be said, that as far as Spencer and Gillen's evidence may be taken as typical of what burial and mourning is in Australia, the legal and customary aspects of the marriage bonds is not less strongly expressed in the way in which they are dissolved, than it is in the way in which they are brought about. CHAPTER IV SEXUAL ASPECT OF MARRIAGE The next point in our investigation is the sexual aspect of the Australian marriage. Unfortunately it will not be much easier to draw a decisive inference from the evidence in this case than it was in the foregoing one. There is perhaps less patent contradiction between the statements; and we are able here to reduce many of the incongruities to geographical differences. But the whole question is very complicated by the fact that the sexual features of marital life in Australia have caused much discussion in connection with the hypothesis of primitive promiscuity and group marriage. They have been very often interpreted according to this hypothesis. Different customs have been pointed out as unmistakable survivals of previous states of marital communism or group marriage. Group marriage has even been said to be in actual existence amongst some tribes.