Eruermer—Some Implements, etc., of the Alligator Tribe, Port Essington. 245 
the women of the Shark’s Bay Tribe, West Australia, were annually shorn for the 
purpose of making hair-twine. The custom, therefore, of using human hair as a belt 
or girdle material appears to have been a common one throughout the Continent. 
ARMLETS. 
The armlets are made of two materials, grass and string, and are of various 
breadths. Those of grass or straw consist of a series of rings, each of equal size, 
lashed together, or they may be made of plaited straw. The string armlets, on the 
contrary, are longitudinally plaited and either stained red or whitened. Those made 
of straw are three inches in diameter and two and a quarter inches wide; those of 
string, three and a half inches diameter and two inches in width. 
Inspector Foelsche speaks* of rings of grass being worn by the North Australian 
tribes “plaited round the arms above the elbow, round the wrists and fingers.” In 
other parts of Australia, Gippsland for instance, such armlets as these were replaced 
by strips of Flying-squirrel skin or that of the Ring-tailed Opossum. t 
NECKLACES. 
One form of necklet worn by this tribe, and apparently an ornament widely 
distributed over Australia, is made of straw stalks cut into beads or bugles of various 
sizes strung on twine of varying degrees of thickness.{ These were worn both by men 
(Pl. xxxv. fig. 2) and women. Smyth says$ that a necklace such as this, measured 
by himself, was thirty feet or more in length, and one contained four hundred and 
seventy-eight pieces. Reed necklaces were worn both by the Yarra and Gippsland 
Tribes of Victoria, the former calling it Kor-6007¢. 
Inspector Foelsche refers to the use of these necklets by the North Australian. 
He says|| “Necklets made of grass stems cut in half-inch lengths, representing beads, 
are put on strings and worn round the neck.” Their use at corroborees in Victoria 
is mentioned by Stanbridge,‘l the necklaces consisting of a great many coils of short 
pieces of threaded reed. 
A second necklet consists of twenty-two kangaroo incisors strung on string 
(Pl. xxxiv. fig. 5). The base of each tooth is coated with gum-cement and coloured 
* Trans. R. Soc. S. Australia for 1881-82 [1882], V. p 14. 
+ Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. pp. 271, 275. 
+ Lumholtz states that in the Herbert River District a necklace of yellow grass bugles, strung on string long enough 
to go round the neck ten or twelve times is worn as an ‘‘ emblem of mourning.” Amongst Cannibals, 1890, p. 203. 
§ Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. p. 279. 
|| Trans. R. Soe. S. Australia for 1881-82 [1882], V. p. 14. 
‘| Trans. Eth. Soc., 1861, p. 297. 
