[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

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PREFACE xxiii
to me perfectly lucidly, I could not explain it to anyone better
myself. It is perfectly clear that the natives (the intelligent
ones) do conceive of the system as a connected mechanism which
they can represent by diagrams [which they drew for Deacon
on the sand] . . . It is extraordinary that a native should be
able to represent completely by a diagram a complex system of
matrimonial classes. The way they could reason about relation-
ships from their diagrams was absolutely on a par with a good
scientiï¬Åc exposition in a lecture room. I have collected in
Malekula, too, some cases of a remarkable mathematical ability.
I hope, when I get my material together, to be able to prove
that the native is capable of pretty advanced abstract thought.â€ù
The joy and satisfaction which this discovery gave him was
well founded. Fortunately he had written up this information
and this ï¬Årstfniit of Deacon's work was published as he left it
(“ The Regulation of Marriage in_ Ambrym,â€ù joum. Roy. Anth.
Inst, vol. lvii, 1927, pp. 325-42). This paper was immediately
followed by one bearing the same title by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
and by another “ Bilateral descent and the formation of marriage
classes â€ù by Brenda Z. Selig-man, which emphasize the theoretical
importance of Deacon’s work. Professor Radcliffe-Brown begins
by saying, " Nothing reveals more clearly the loss that anthro-
pology has suffered by the death of Bernard Deacon than his
discovery of a system of ‘ classes ’ regulating marriage and
kin5hip'in Ambrym, not only by reason of the importance of
that discovery but also and particularly by reason of the way
imiwhich it was made as the conï¬Årmation of an acute reasoning
that something of the sort should be there " (1.0. p. 343). In a.
letter to me eacon -wrote : " Actually the thing [this particular
investigation] was to me a kind of crucial experiment at the
end of a long train of ideas—beginning really in my ï¬Årst reading
of Rivers and talks with Armstrong. I owe a great deal to him
in social anthropology. Before I left England I had determined
to have a go at Ambrym, as a test-case."
Doubtless Deacon did other work on the island, but, except
the article on Marriage-classes, only very few notes have been
found. He wrote on 28th January, I927, from Balap, South-
West Arnbrym: " The culture is very like the S. Malekulan~
S.W. Bay to Port Sandwich. I have found Nalawan again, with
§i