BY WALTER R. HARPER. 433 



ing, immense labour of fashioning these "stones" merely for 

 gi-inding seeds unless they possessed some special advantages over 

 the ordinary grinders. It will be admitted that the onus of 

 proof of these advantages lies with those ethnologists who main- 

 tain they were intended so to be used. 



If, as is sometimes the case, a sheet of bark was substituted for 

 the sandstone table, the wear would have been more gradual, but 

 none the less sure. 



This matter of wear is the most important oljjection to the 

 " seed-grinder " theory, but other questions arise : Why did a 

 woman (for grinding is a woman's duty, and hers is the task of ■ 

 collecting and j^reparing all vegetable food) choose soft clay for a 

 hand -stone 1 Why are the bases concave 1 Why did she decorate 

 these stones and leave her other grinders plain ? 



If it be suggested that they were only used by the men, upon 

 special occasions for special purposes, grinding or otherwise, then 

 thej'^are no longer domestic implements, but " ceremonial stones." 



The " Ceremonial Stone " theory seems to have something to 

 recommend it. The blacks of Western X.S. Wales in the districts 

 where most of these objects were found carved their weapons of 

 warfare and the chase, the trees around their chief's grave, and 

 the earth and trees of an initiation ground,* but why did they 

 carve these stones 1 Idle fancy could not have guided their hands, 

 for here are nine specimens, found hundreds of miles apart, all 

 exhibiting similar features. Besides, a black might cut gashes 

 in a tree trunk just to try his new hatchet, or he might daub 

 grotesque designs on the roof of a cave merely for amusement, 

 but he will not laboriously carve out and decorate a solid block 

 of slate or sandstone for nothing; or if one eccentric individual 

 would do so, half-a-dozen would not be guilty of the same waste 

 of energy. 



These "stones" are certainly not weapons; their markings 

 prove they have nothing in common with memorial trees; then 



* The rock carvings of the Eastern Coast are, I believe, altogether absent 

 from Western N.S.W. 

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