Note 310 — Chapter IV · [89] SEXUAL ASPECT OF MARRIAGE

For a detailed enumeration and description of all tribes among whom practices of the Pirrauru type exist, see Howitt, J.A.I., xx. pp. 31-34. In this article, which is nearly exactly reproduced in Howitt's last work (Nat. Tr.), we possess, undoubtedly, the best information about the Pirrauru custom. In another place (Folk-Lore, xviii. p. 184), Howitt assigns a still wider area to the Pirrauru practice. "Altogether, Dr. Howitt reckons that the tribes which practised a form of group marriage like the Pirrauru of the Dieri must have occupied an area of some 500,000 square miles, extending for a distance of 850 miles from Oodnadatta, the northern boundary of the Urabunna, to the eastern frontier of the Dieri, or of the Mardala tribe between the Flinders Range and the Barrier Range."—Frazer, Tot. and Exog., i. p. 371.