6 MEMOIRS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM. 



the pelican, and would suffice to hold considerable quantities of poLson, for the 

 conveyance of which it is surmised they are adapted and in which they may have 

 been employed.^ 



A similar object, a human shin-bone, in the Adelaide Museum Ethnological 

 collection, and described as "found in blacks' camp (Lake Albert), and said to 

 have been used for carrying a fluid poison," would indicate a well-defined 

 toxicological knowledge, probably of earlier date. 



The possible use of the "poison-carriers" as vehicles for the death-pointer 

 is not, however, lost sight of. The only one, to our knowledge, extant is a "box" 

 of pelican wing-feathers presented, we understand, by Roth to the Australian 

 JMuseum, and is distinct in form from the specimen described. 



'' Methods and Material. — Palmer,** and later Roth,^° have published lists 

 ■of fish-poisons in use among the aboriginal communities of portions of the eastern 

 littoral and in the inland areas of North-West-Central Queensland and the Gulf 

 of Carpentaria. These include many submitted as authenticated specimens to us. 

 Our collection, however, covers some new ethnographic ground, and further has 

 been treated from the aspect of actual effectivity as established by a series of 

 physiological experiments with test fish. 



For this purpose Trout Gudgeon {Krcfftius adsperus (Castelnau) ), Fire- 

 tail (Anstrogohis galii, Ogilby), Sunfish (Mdanotcenia nigrans (Richardson) ), of 

 Southern Queensland freshwater streams, have been utilised, and, for the 

 distinction of poisons exhibiting markedly certain and rapid action from those 

 of less well-defined toxic property or of tardy and uncertain effect, infusions of 

 an arbitrary concentration of one part plant material in one thousand parts of 

 water have been employed. The determination of actual effectivity would seem 

 to us to have ethnological importance in its bearing upon the question as to 

 whether adoption of certain material was dictated by certainty of its potency 

 or by a faith rather in efficacy of the practice as such. 



The reliability of deduction as to general efficacy from the premise of 

 observed effect is, we judge, not absolute on more than one ground : the 

 effectivity of air-dried and stored specimens, with which the experimental work 

 has been conducted, may have undergone considerable diminution: certain 

 varieties of fish other than those employed may be more sasceptible to the 

 poisonous effects of some plant materials (Hanriot so differentiates for Tephrosia) , 

 and seasonal alteration may account for diminution or disappearance of activity. 

 The last-mentioned probability, though warranting assumption of greater potency 

 during period of greater elaboration or storage of toxic principle, invests, still, 

 the material with unreliability in use. 



The collection of a series of authenticated fish-poisons has presented 

 opi)ortunity for chemical examination as to the nature of the toxic principles 

 involved in their action. Question has recently^^ been raised in connection with 

 the Sierra Leone fish-poison, Pentaclethra macrophylla, as to the efficacy of 

 tannin (of which the specimen was found to contain 7-1 per cent.) as a piscicide. 

 Our experiments show marked physiological disturbance and ultimate death of 

 fish in solution of tannic acid (Mercks pure) of 1 in 10,000 concentration, and 

 infusions of one part of the common tannin agents, Myrobalans and Valonia, in 



'^'\ Ct 8 j^ Hamlyn-Harris, Abstract of Proceedings, Roy. Soc. Q., vol. 27, 1915. 



^ E. Palmer, Notes on some Australian Tribes, Journ. Anthrop. Instit., vol. 13, 1884, 

 V. 321,. 



^i^W. E. Roth, North Queensland Etlmography, Bull. 3, 1901, p. 19. 



" 11 Bull. Imperial Inst., vol. xiii., No. 1 (1915), p. -17. 



