66 ABORIGINAL DESIGNATIONS FOR STONE IMI'I.KMHXTS. 



by the fact that in the word for freestone the last word, 

 "galee," is tfhe same as that in l(n)oan-yale. The most 

 conspicuous rock of Tasmania, even more so than the 

 freestone, is the Diabas, and, if there existed a word for 

 freestone, it is more than probable that there was also 

 a word for Diabas, and that one of these four words 

 stands for Diabas. Next to the Diabas comes the mud- 

 stone, and for the Eastern tribes the granite. If free- 

 stone was " ponin-galee," is it too raslh to assume that 

 the closely-connected mudstone was " l(n)oan-galee 

 (yale) " ? The other words stand either for Diabas or 

 for Diabas and granite. 



There remain, therefore, three words — 



i. Peurar = peoora, 



2. Nannee = nami, 



3. Noeena(r). 



If we consider the very different spelling of Nor- 

 man's words, I only need to refer to a comparison of 

 the words teew T artear (Xorman) and trawutta (Milligan 

 and others). It is not very improbable that the word 

 " noeena(r)" really means " loina," and, if we further 

 consider what has above been said about the change of 

 the letter " 1 " into an " n," the words " nannee " and 

 " nami " originally spelt " lannee " and " lami." These 

 last two words have therefore most probably to be in- 

 cluded under the above list, meaning nothing else but 

 " a stone." 



We have therefore arrived at a probable very accu- 

 rate view as to the meaning of all these words except 

 the word 



Peurar=peoora. 



Mr. Ritz has kindly told me that in his opinion this 

 word should represent something spherical. In many 

 languages, as Mr. Ritz tells me, the " bll " or " pll " 

 means something round or spherical (1). There is no 

 doubt that the word " peura " can be pronounced in 

 such a way as to closely resemble the primitive root, 

 and I think that Mr. Ritz's suggestion is probably cor- 

 rect. We can practically divide the whole group of Tas- 

 manian implements into two classes — the chipped tron- 

 attas and the spherical pebbles — represented by the 



(1) For instance the word " ball." 



