the Banks' Islands, In both these places there is matrilineal descent together with the dual organisation of society. The whole population of an island is divided into two exogamous sections, and every person belongs to the moiety of his mother. Now,—and probably it has long been so,—the succession to property is in an intermediate state between an older condition of inheritance by the brothers or the sister's children and a later condition in which the children inherit. Some kinds of property or right still go to the brother or the sister's son, while, in cases in which the children inherit, a clear indication of the older method of inheritance is shown by certain payments which have to be made to the sister's children. This being the case, I was hardly prepared to find that the relative who stands in the closest relation to a person, if closeness of relationship is to be judged by its associated functions, is the father's sister.
In Pentecost I was only able to obtain a very scanty account[1] of the functions of the father's sister, and there is little doubt that far more remains to be discovered. Enough was found, however, to show very definitely a relationship resembling in its main features that which had been already found in Tonga. The father's sister chooses a wife for her nephew, who will take without demur the woman chosen. A man will also obey his aunt generally, and anything he possesses is at her command. He helps her in her gardens or at other work, and, when a man is going away, he will leave instructions with his sons that they are to do whatever their aunt wishes. So far the relationship is as in Tonga, but there is a difference in other respects. In Pentecost aunt and nephew may eat together, but the nephew may not say the name of his aunt. If they are alone together, and if the aunt does not hear her nephew when he calls 'muani' her kinship name, he may call her by her personal
- ↑ I was only able to obtain this through the kind help of Miss E. Wilson of the Melanesian Mission.
