110 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
the eye of anyone who should not see them, lumps of clay 
modelled to roughly represent a heart, and pierced all over with 
sharp bits of iron. They have been made by superstitious 
peasants, and their object is by means of sympathetic magic to 
bring some evil upon the person whom it is desired to harm. 
Just as the clay heart is pierced by the iron, so it is believed 
that out of a kind of sympathy with this the real living heart 
will be similarly afflicted. 
If we turn to savage peoples we find that in some the magic 
power is supposed to be possessed, at least, to an almost ex- 
clusive extent by a special class of individuals, who rank as so- 
called medicine men, sorcerers, or, perhaps, sometimes as 
priests ; in other tribes, while there are some individuals whose 
skill in magic is acknowledged to be above the ordinary, yet 
there is no such special class of magic men. It is impossible, 
however, to draw a hard and fast line, for probably in all savage 
tribes magic is practised to a greater or less extent by every 
individual, though in some it has been apparently more and 
more restricted to a definite class, the members of which often 
profit to a large extent by their superior ability or cunning, and 
the belief which they are careful to inculcate in the younger 
people in the efficacy of their methods. 
In Central Australia, while there is a distinct class of medicine 
men, the practice of magic is by no means confined to them ; 
their special ability consists in curing disease, and in finding out 
who is responsible for the death of any individual. 
For the purpose of bringing more clearly into view the large 
part played by magic in the life of a Central Australian native 
we will briefly follow one through his career. 
Amongst the Arunta and other tribes which inhabit the open 
scrubland and mountain ranges of Central Australia every child 
is supposed to be the reincarnation of some ancestral individual 
who lived in the far-away dream times, to which the name of 
the Alcheringa is given. Sooner or later the individual died, 
or, rather, as the natives say, his body went into the ground, 
while his spirit remained there dwelling in some special rock or 
tree which arose to mark the spot. From this, which is called 
the Nanja, there issued a second spirit, the double of the first. 
What we may speak of as the original spirits are called 
Iruntarinia; their doubles are the Arumburinga. The former 
inhabit certain spots where the old Alcheringa people went into 
the ground, and each one of them carries about with him or her 
a sacred magic stick or stone called a Churinga. The Churinga 
is one of the class of objects which may never be seen by women 
or uninitiated men. When undergoing reincarnation the ‘spirit 
drops the Churinga, and as soon as ever the child is born the 
father and one or two men who are close relatives go in search of 
it, and if they do not find it, then one is made out of a tree 
