IMPLEMENTS OF SUPERSTITION AND MAGIC— EAMLYN-EAEEIS. 



ON CERTAIN IMPLEMENTS OF SUPERSTITION 



AND MAGIC. 



ILLUSTRATED BY SPECIMENS IN THE QUEENSLAND 

 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS. 



By R. Hamlyn-Harris, D.Sc, Etc. (Director). 



(Plate V and Two Text-figures.) 



The appalling rapidity with which the Queensland aborigines are dying 

 •out justifies the publication of these few particulars. Every year the chance 

 of saving their relics and the story they have to tell becomes more and more 

 remote, and indeed it is questionable whether even now it is not too late. 

 There are few localities in Queensland where the influences of civilisation are 

 not apparent, and the native of to-day when speaking of himself and his 

 forbears prefers to draw upon his imagination rather than speak the unso- 

 phisticated truth; sometimes he is unable to do so, but be that as it may, the 

 difficulty of sifting the truth from that which is false is becoming increasingly 

 more difficult. These facts were brought home to me afresh during a recent 

 tour in North Queensland, observing this kind of thing at first hand. Little 

 reliance can now, unfortunately, be placed upon anything a blackfellow tells 

 you except in very rare instances. His imaginative faculties run riot on every 

 possible occasion, and the more credulous you become the more does he delight 

 to impose upon you. I have often been struck, in conversation with a native, 

 how imperfect his memory seems to be and how easily connected ideas fade into 

 insignificance, characteristics leading to the rapid elimination of knowledge of 

 customs and beliefs. It is astonishing, also, how easily the native brings himself 

 to believe that which he fancies to be the case. I do not think this ignorance 

 is assumed, but real. 



I have seen implements and weapons made by aboriginals about which 

 tb ere can be no possible doubt that they are of modern manufacture, with ideas 

 incorporated, which they themselves have acquired within the last decade or 

 so — implements which bear in every detail of their manufacture the mark of a 

 bungler — and yet these people will declare most solemnly that they and their 

 forefathers have used such from time immemorial. In order to safeguard the 

 interests of scientific research, it is necessary that some mention should be 



