Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/58

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46
KINSHIP AND

becomes still more probable when we find that in a third island, Ysabel, closely allied in culture both to Florida and Guadalcanar, there is a clear tradition of the former practice of the cross-cousin marriage although it is now only an occasional event.

Again, in one district of San Cristoval in the Solomons the term fongo is used both for the father-in-law and the father's sister's husband, and kafongo similarly denotes both the mother-in-law and the mother's brother's wife. This island differs more widely from Guadalcanar in culture than Florida or Ysabel, but the evidence for the former existence of the marriage in these islands gives us more confidence in ascribing the common designations of San Cristoval to the cross-cousin marriage than would have been the case if these common designations had been the only examples of such possible survivals in the Solomons. Speaking in more general terms, one may say that the probability that the common nomenclature for two relatives is the survival of a form of marriage becomes the greater, the more similar is the general culture in which the supposed survival is found to that of a people who practise this form of marriage. The case will be greatly strengthened if there should be intermediate links between the supposed survival and the still living institution.

When we find a feature such as that of the Florida system among a people none of whose allies in culture practise the cross-cousin marriage, the