BY ROBERT L. JACK, K.G.S., F.R.G.S. 97 



is suggestive of the " native companion," while their wingless 

 condition points, on the other hand, to the emu or cassowary. 

 The spots agree with neither. The tail of No. 15 is like that of 

 a plucked fowl ; the corresponding part of No. 16 is blurred by a 

 portion of a superimposed human figure. The extreme attenua- 

 tion of both birds rather inclines me to think that the models 

 were " drawn " as well as plucked. 



As an apology for the badness of the paintings, it may be 

 said that the artist must, in most cases, have drawn from 

 memory. In no case could he have had the model in front of 

 him, as he painted not on a canvas but on a wall or roof. 



From their state of preservation, or, in other words, from 

 the extent to which they have suffered from weathering, I am 

 inclined to think that all the paintings are about the same age. 

 I am not sufficiently learned in " technique" to detect any such 

 mannerism running through the paintings — with the exception 

 of a certain " woodenness " which appears to be common to all 

 aboriginal Australian art — as would 'enable me to declare with 

 certainty that they are all the work of a single artist, although 

 I think it very likely. 



The peculiar positions of the drawings may be accounted 

 for in two ways : first, the inherent laziness of the Australian 

 aboriginal, whose favourite attitude is, not leaning on posts, but 

 lying on his back ; and second, the desire for immortality which 

 fills the heart of every artist, however humble. With the latter 

 end in view a position has always been chosen where the draw- 

 ing would at least be protected from rain. In superimposing 

 white clay on red ochre, or vice versa, the simple native displayed 

 an ignorance of the chemistry of pigments which is not without 

 a parallel, even among Eoyal Academicians. Hence the pictures 

 can hardly be expected to outlive a single generation. 



When first I lighted on the animal paintings, I thought for 

 a time that I might be privileged to discover paintings of some 

 of the extinct marsupials by contemporary artists, and so provide 

 direct evidence not only of the co-existence of man and the 

 extinct fauna, but also of the forms of the latter. Some of the 

 subjects, although decidedly marsupial, were so grotesquely 

 unlike the present fauna that the hope seemed reasonable, but 

 I was compelled to fall back on the comparatively prosaic expla- 



