1897.} MATHEWS — ROCK CARVINGS AND PAINTINGS. 471 



In the production of rock carvings three methods were employed 

 by the native artists, i. That most generally adopted was to cut the 

 outline of the required figure on the rock. It is probable that the 

 object to be delineated was first designed by making a mark with a 

 piece of colored stone or hard pebble along the lines to be cut out. 

 A number of holes were then made close together along this outline, 

 and these were afterwards connected by cutting out the intervening 

 spaces, making a continuous groove of the required width and 

 depth. From the appearance of the punctured indentations made 

 along the lines thus out out, I am led to assume that the natives had 

 a hard stone or pebble chipped or ground to a point and used as a 

 chisel. Such a chisel could have been used either by holding it in 

 the hand or otherwise and hitting it with another stone, or by 

 fastening a handle to it and chopping with it in the same way that 

 a tomahawk is used. As soon as the outline was chiseled out to 

 the required depth, it is not unlikely that a stone tomahawk, in addi- 

 tion to the chisel, was used in completing the work, because the 

 sides of the grooves were cut more evenly than would have been 

 possible with such an instrument as that with which the holes were 

 punctured. From the smoothness of the edges of the grooves in a 

 few of the best executed figures I am inclined to think it probable 

 that after the chiseling and chopping out was finished the edges 

 were ground down by rubbing a stone along them, to give them an 

 even and regular appearance. 



2. In other instances the whole surface of the rock within 

 the outline of the figure was cut away to the same depth as 

 the exterior groove, as in the cases mentioned by Capt. Wickham 

 in his description of the carvings on Depuch Island, on the coast of 

 West Australia, published in \X\q Joiu^nal of the Royal Geographical 

 Society, London, Vol. xii, pp. 79-83. 



3. Another method was to trace on the rock all the lines of the 

 object to be drawn, and then to form a groove by repeated rubbing 

 with a hard stone or pebble along the outlines which had been so 

 designed until the entire figure was completed. Carvings executed 

 upon rocks in this way have been observed in West Australia and 

 in some of the other Australian colonies. 



In a previous communication to this Society^ I furnished a plate 

 containing sixty-one figures of men, women and children, kangaroos, 

 emus, fish, wombats, snakes, native weapons, etc., together with 



iPROC, Amer. Philos, Soc, Vol. xxxvi, pp. 195, PI. iv, Figs. 1-61. 



