short survey of their economic characteristics.
- Matrilineal kinship.—The underlying idea that this means identity of blood and of substance is by no means forcibly expressed on its economic side. The right of inheritance, the common participation in certain titles of ownership, and a limited right to use one another’s implements and objects of daily use are often restricted in practice by private jealousies and animosities. In economic gifts more especially, we find here the remarkable custom of purchasing during lifetime, by instalments, the titles to garden plots and trees and the knowledge of magic, which by right ought to pass at death from the older to the younger generation of matrilineal kinsmen. The economic identity of matrilineal kinsmen comes into prominence at the tribal distributions—sagali—where all of them have to share in the responsibilities of providing food.
- Marriage ties.—(Husband and wife; and derived from that, father and children). It is enough to tabulate this type of relationship here, and to remind the reader that it is characterised by free gifts, as has been minutely described in the foregoing classification of gifts, under (1).
- Relationship-in-law.—These ties are in their economic aspect not reciprocal or symmetrical. That is, one side in it, the husband of the woman, is the economically favoured recipient, while the wife’s brothers receive from him gifts of smaller value in the aggregate. As we know, this relationship is economically defined by the regular and substantial harvest gifts, by which the husband’s storehouse is filled every year by his wife’s brothers. They also have to perform certain services for him. For all this, they receive a gift of vaygu’a (valuables) from time to time, and some food in payment for services rendered.
- Clanship.—The main economic identification of this group takes place during the sagali, although