76 RECORDS OP THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



extremity. Dilly-bags when used by the men are tabu, the prohibi- 

 tion including everything therein contained; when used by women, 

 nothing beyond the ordinary family possessions, nothing liable to 

 tabu, is carried in them. Supposing a person break his promise 

 and speak by name of his pi-wal, the individual who bores his 

 nose at the initiation ceremony, he is punished by having certain 

 of his property, or perhaps a dietary to which he has been 

 accustomed, made tcha-bul in favour of the person mentioned 

 (Bloomfield River). 



4. Although tabu is thus generally declared by men, it can 

 here and there be instituted by women, but then only in the male 

 interests. The women, for instance, will be quarreling, perhaps 

 over some alleged inequality in sharing the tood, when one of 

 them will suddenly declare it all tabu in favour of her husband 

 or any male belonging to the same exogamous group as herself 

 (Bloomfield River), or to her son (Cape Bedford), when it cannot, 

 of course, be eaten or touched by anyone else. 



5. Certain dietaries are strictly forbidden to all young people 

 before arriving at puberty, the full attainment of which is 

 generally dependant upon the first of the initiation ceremonies in 

 the male, or upon initiation (where practised), or the birth 

 of the first baby in the female. On the Pennefather River, for 

 instance, stingaree, wild-fowl eggs, certain sharks, certain snakes, 

 emu flesh, and, before the introduction of the iron harpoon, turtle, 

 are forbidden them. The dependency of the turtle upon iron 

 (which is capable of piercing the carapace) was explained to me 

 by the young men by reason of the fact that while wooden har- 

 poons were in vogue these creatures could only be caught by 

 striking them in the soft parts, i.e., the neck and posteriorly, 

 and their capture was consequently no easy matter, thus rendering 

 their flesh a very scarce commodity. On the Tully River there is 

 a distinction made in the foods forbidden to the young according 

 as it is derived from the sea or land, in the former case the 

 tabu being spoken of as chamolo, in the latter as kamma. Here 

 chamolo includes stingaree, barramundi, mullet, trevally, and 

 salmon, its disregard entailing the culprit's hair turning prema- 

 turely grey. Kamma embraces bandicoot, iguana, porcupine, 

 black snake, carpet snake and platypus ; and were any young 

 person to transgress, the particular animal would make him sick 

 by building its nest or laying its eggs inside the back of his neck. 



G. More than this, certain foods, varying with each district, 

 are forbidden to any woman whatsoever, old or young ; thus, 

 stingaree and mullet are tabu to all females at Cape Grafton and 

 along a large extent of coast-line northward. During their 



