+473+. The remaining districts of Australia have been less carefully investigated than the central and southern parts, and information about their totemistic customs is not always satisfactory. So far as the accounts go there is a widespread divergence from simple clan organization in these districts. In Northeast Australia (Queensland) there are exogamous subclasses, and no clan taboos. In the southwest not clans but families are the social units; these trace their descent from animals, and there are individual animal patrons. In the northwest no clan organization is reported; there is class exogamy, and in the magical ceremonies the performers are taken from the exogamous classes.
+474+. _Torres Straits Islands._ These noteworthy variations in the totemism of the Australian continent appear to be connected in a general way with differences of climate and the degree of isolation of the clans and tribes. Similar variations appear in the Torres Straits islands and in British New Guinea. In the western islands of the Straits (the only part in which distinct totemism has been found) the social organization is to a certain extent independent of totemic relations: the clans are locally segregated, and marriage is mainly regulated by blood-kinship. On the other hand, an intimate relation between a man and his totem is recognized--the latter, as a rule, is not eaten by the related clansmen (there are exceptions), magical economic ceremonies are performed by certain clans, and there is clan exogamy. A possible survival of an early social arrangement is the existence of subsidiary totems.
+475+. There is also a rudimentary cult of heroes: two of these (animal in form) have shrines and effigies, annual dances are performed in their honor, and stones are shown in which their souls are supposed to dwell. The resemblance of this cult to certain forms of worship in Polynesia (in Samoa, for example) is apparent; the stones may be compared with similar abodes of superhuman animals or spirits in Central Australia and elsewhere; the myths connect the two animal heroes with the origin of totems--a common procedure. One hero, Kwoiam of Mabuiag, is said to have been a real man, and to have been almost deified; divinization of dead men is not unusual in Polynesia.