82 RECORDS OP THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



occupants, for, according to the district, a child lias claims on 

 its father's or on its mother's (Bloomtield) country, and sonie- 

 timtts on neither (Pennefather River) ^. In many cases, as in the 

 far Wpstern Districcs, owing to forced migrations on account of 

 scarcity of water, advancing European settlement and other 

 causes, the place-name of the home has been i)reserved, but its 

 exact geographical identification lost*', while on the Wellesley 

 Islands, and here and there in the Peninsula, natives are to be 

 found amongst whom no necessity has apparently arisen for 

 having a collective or specialised name at all. 



3. As a general rule, however, within certain limits, each 

 group has more or less friendly, commercial, or other interests 

 with some one or other of its neighbours ; its meml)ers, though 

 speaking different dialects may render themselves pretty 

 mutually intelligible and possess in common various trade-routes, 

 markets, hunting-grounds, customs, manners and beliefs with 

 the result that they might as a whole be well described as mess- 

 mates, the one group sometimes speaking of another by a term 

 corresponding with that of friend. There may, or may not (e.g., 

 Boulia District) be one single term applied to such a collection 

 of friendly groups, i.e , a tribe occupying a district, the meaning 

 of the collective name being either unknown (eg., Kalkadun, 

 Workai-a), or bearing reference to the physical conformation of 

 the country, or else depending apparently upon the nature of 

 the language spoken. So far as physical conformation is con- 

 cerned, the collective name indicates groups of people occu))ying 

 forest {e.g., Martchi-tchi of the Bloomtield River), scrub or bush 

 country {e.g., Barti-tchi of the Bloomfield River), low-lymg 

 plains {e.g., Ku-inmur-burra of Broadsound District), mountains, 

 coast-line, etc. As far as I have been able to judge, it is these 

 variations of site which have a great deal to do, nay, which I 

 might also say, have given rise to distinctive ethnographical 

 differences ; generally speaking, there is always er.mity between 

 occupants of the coast-line and inland tribes, between the inhabi- 

 tants of the plains and the mountain people. The collective name 

 dependent upon the language or dialect spoken by the separate 

 gi'oups may bear reference to peculiarities or differences of 

 speech. In the following examples for instance on the North- 

 east Coastline and its hinterland, this is very striking. Koko- 

 yimi-dir, and Koko-yerla (n;^-tchi which has become corrupted 

 into Koko-yellanji, are two words, each in their own dialect, 



B Roth —Bull. 5— Sect. 68. 



« As in certain of the groups in the Houlia District. 



' The n is euphonic. 



