+471+. Still a different situation appears in the southeastern part of the continent (New South Wales and Victoria)--several prominent features of the Central system are absent. The Dieri clans bear the names of their totems, from which also they think themselves descended, but they eat them freely. Some adjacent tribes eat them only at a pinch, others refrain from them. The clans of the Narrinyeri are mostly localized, and the clan-names are not now those of the totems;[823] the totems are eaten. The Kurnai show the greatest divergence from the ordinary type--they have neither totemic clans nor exogamous classes; their rule of exogamy relates to districts. Throughout the southeast the conduct of magical economic ceremonies by clans, every clan being responsible for its own totem, seems not to exist.
+472+. In certain tribes (the Wotjoballuk, the Yuin, the Kurnai, and others) there are sex-patrons, animals intimately related to all the males or all the females of the tribe; the belief is said to be that the life of any individual of the animal group is the life of a man or a woman, and neither sex group will kill its patron animal. So far as regards the conception of identity with the animal and reverence for it, the institution agrees with the usual totemic type; but since it is not connected with clans, some such designation for the animal as "patron" or "guardian" is to be preferred to "totem."[824] Such animals, protectors of sexes, are of rare occurrence, having been certainly found so far only in Southeast Australia, and they occur in a body of tribes that show a disposition to discard the clan constitution. In this region individual men also sometimes have animal guardians, so that a general tendency toward individualism may be recognized. It is not unnatural to connect this tendency with the fertility of the south coast, which may weaken the clan organization. The organization by sex is a singular phenomenon, of the history of which there are no records. It is doubtless a special development of the widespread separation of the sexes, combined with an increasing recognition of the property rights and the social equality of women. At an early age boys were often kept apart from girls. Special taboos, of food and other things, were imposed on women. On the other hand, they were in some cases the owners of the tribal property, and were sometimes admitted to membership in secret societies. The organization of the sex would follow under peculiarly favorable conditions.[825]