Chapter II

, Division VI), and this is very well realised by the natives themselves.

As a matter of fact, the psychology underlying these conditions is this: normally a man is emotionally attached to his wife, and has a very strong personal affection towards his children, and expresses these feelings by gifts, and more especially by trying to endow his children with as much of his wealth and position as he can. This, however, runs counter to the matrilineal principle as well as to the general rule that all gifts require repayment, and so these gifts are explained away by the natives in a manner that agrees with these rules. The above crude explanation of the natives by reference to sex payment is a document, which in a very illuminating manner shows up the conflict between the matrilineal theory and the actual sentiments of the natives, and also how necessary it is to check the explicit statements of natives, and the views contained in their terms and phraseology by direct observation of full-blooded life, in which we see man not only laying down rules and theories, but behaving under the impulse of instinct and emotion.

2. Customary payments, re-paid irregularly, and without strict equivalence.--The most important of these are the annual payments received at harvest time by a man from his wife's brothers (cf.