Note 1 — Chapter XX · GENEALOGIES AND POPULATION

The records which I obtained in Torres Straits were of a different kind; they only extended back for three or four generations, but included all collateral lines, so that a man was able to tell me all the descendants of his great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather, and knew the descent of his mother, his father’s mother, his mother’s mother, and his wife as fully as that of his father. By this means I was able to collect1 a record of the great majority of marriages which had taken place in the community for the last three or four generations, was able to work out the laws which had regulated these marriages and to study in detail the system of kinship.