BY FRll/ N()KTL1N(;, M.A., PH.D. 89 



and it would, therefore, be more than remarkable had the 

 latter already reached such a high perfection in basket 

 plaiting as to be equal to the Lake Dwellers. 



I am unable to say whether the baskets found in the 

 Lake Dwellings were manufactured like the Tasmanian 

 ones, viz., commenced at the top. However that may be, I 

 consider the Tasmanian baskets as the most primitive type 

 of human basket work (29). Tlie great probability that 

 the tughbrana was commenced at the top, and not at the 

 bottoim , renders this kind of work absolutely different from 

 any later work. It would be of the greatest interest to 

 ascertain when the invention was made to plait the baskets 

 in the modern way. 



Though, outside the scope of this paper, I may mention 

 that the Tasmanians possessed a kind of pitcher called 

 nioirunah, and made from sea-weed (Fucus palmata). The 

 onlv specimens that are known are in the British Museum 

 and in France (30). A wooden "spatula" was used to loosen 

 the Haliotis from the rocks to which it firmly adhered 

 There is no moiruuah in the Hobart Museum, and as to the. 

 "spatula,"' I do not think that any specimen at all has been 

 preserved. Neither can I find a name for this implement, 

 and I do not think that it was more than a short stick, end 

 ing in a chisel-shaped edge. 



One word about the so-called canoes, the mallana or 

 nunganah. The accounts agree that they were nothing but 

 bundles of reeds tied together, but the figures of models in 

 the British Museum, and similar models in the Hobart 

 Museum (31), are so suggestive of a real canoe having stem 

 and stem, that I cannot help thinking that their original 

 shape has been greatly improved upon bv those who made 

 the models. Those in the Pitt Rivers Museum seem to be 

 moTe like the real mallana, and more in harmony with the 

 state of the Tasmanian civilisation than the canoe-shaped 

 models in tlie Hobart and British Museum. 



(29) According to Brough Smyth, Aborig. Vict., vol. I., page 346, 

 basket of exactly the ?am^ pattern ai= the Tasmanian one?, and 

 similarly in shape, are still manufactured by the Queensland aborigines. 

 The ftgiires of baskets made liv the aborigines of Victoria, page 343, 

 344, and 545, particularly fig. 159, make it more than probable that the 

 so-called Tamanian baskets in the Biitish Museum, and in the Ox- 

 ford Museum, are really of Victorian origin. 



(30) See Ling Eoth, Aborigines of Tasmania, 2nd ed., page 142. 



(31) Ling Roth, Aborig. Tas., plate to face page 153. 



