terms the clan (or sept). This, he says, “is a much smaller body, consisting of some three or four generations only, in descent from a perfectly well-known male ancestor,” &c. Now, these remarks are not applicable to the social organization of the Maori people. Jenks's “tribe” is equivalent to the Maori hapu or sub-tribe. His “clan” is the Maori sub-hapu (or sub-clan). In former times it was a poor Maori tribe indeed that could not muster a thousand fighting-men. Also, among the Maori a common ancestor of a tribe is by no means a fictitious person. The Maori clan or sub-tribe may be descendants of an ancestor who lived ten, or fifteen, or more generations ago, and may consist of hundreds of individuals. Certainly it would appear that in some cases—e.g., the Arawa—the primal social unit might be termed rather a group of tribes, a league. But in cases where all members thereof are descended from a common ancestor, and, however non-cohesive in times of peace, yet group themselves ever together in defence against an extra-tribal enemy, and act in other important matters as a political entity, then such a people, or collection of peoples, must be looked upon as a tribe. The unit of the social organization of the Maori is, I take it, the consanguineous family group or sub-clan (i.e., sub-hapu). Now, it would entirely depend upon the numbers of such a sub-clan as to whether the members thereof would or would not be required by native custom to contract exogamous marriages. Even then such unions would not be exogamous in regard to the tribe or hapu. As a tribal matter marriages were usually endogamous in former times. We will, however, make this matter clearer by means of the genealogy of a portion of a sub-hapu as an illustration. Prior, however, to entering upon a description of Maori marriage we will tarry a while with the gods, and invade the realm of myth and animism. Animistic Myths and Mythical Origin of Marriage. In this paper I make use of the term “marriage” to denote the union or cohabiting not only of the genus homo, but also of gods, heroes, mythical beings, personifications, and animated natural objects and phenomena. The most remote allusion to sex in Maori mythology pertains to the period, long anterior to the existence of Rangi and Papa-tuanuku (the Sky and Earth), when certain primordial beings or personifications existed in the primitive chaos from which the elements and all living beings have sprung. These beings are said to have been bisexual, and to have produced offspring down to the time when earth and sky were so formed, after which the progeny and descendants of the