clan-system, are entirely exogamous;[1774] and, among the tribes of Western Victoria described by Mr. Dawson, the laws also forbid a man to marry into his mother’s tribe, or his grandmother’s tribe or into an adjoining tribe, or one that speaks his own dialect.[1775] In Tasmania, a man was not permitted to marry a woman of his own tribe (clan?);[1776] and in Polynesia, marriages with blood-relations were everywhere avoided except in royal families.[1777] Thus in Samoa, according to Mr. Turner, so much care was taken to prevent incest that a list of what they deemed improper marriages would almost compare with the ‘Table of Kindred and Affinity.’ They say that, of old, custom and the gods frowned upon the union of those in whom consanguinity could be closely traced.[1778] Speaking of the aborigines of the Melanesian islands, Dr. Codrington observes, “In the native view of mankind, almost everywhere in the islands which are here under consideration, nothing seems more fundamental than the division of the people into two or more classes, which are exogamous, and in which descent is counted through the mother.” Yet “the blood connection with the father and the father’s near relations is never out of sight. Consequently the marriage of those who are near in blood, though they are not ‘sogoi’ (_i.e._, kindred), and may lawfully marry, is discountenanced.”[1779] In New Britain, if a man were accused of adultery or fornication with a woman, he would at once be acquitted by the public voice if he could say, “She is one of us,” _i.e._, she belongs to my totem, which in itself precludes the possibility of any sexual intercourse between us.[1780] In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it would be a crime punishable with death for a man or woman to marry a person belonging to his or her mother’s clan, “though they may have no recent relation of consanguinity to each other, and though neither they nor their parents may have even seen each other before.”[1781] In Lifu, as I am informed by Mr. Radfield, who is a resident of this island, marriages are forbidden between first, but not second cousins, both on the mother’s and father’s side, as well as between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews. Matrimonial alliances between first cousins are also prohibited in the Caroline Islands;[1782] whilst, in the Pelew Group, intermarriage between any relations on the mother’s side is unlawful.[1783]