PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION F. 115 
and it is the duty of a medicine man to see that the crime is 
sheeted home to some culprit, and, though it may be after the 
lapse of a considerable time, yet the guilty man is always found, 
and is lucky if he escapes with his life. 
A potent implement of magic used by the men, all of whom 
carry one about, is a form of knout, called Ililika, the sight of 
which is quite enough to recall an obstinate and intractable 
wife to a sense of what is fit and proper and to a state of sub- 
mission; the stroke of one of these is firmly believed by the 
women to be followed by very serious results, just as the men 
believe that the wound, however slight, of a charmed spear is 
sure, unless counteracted by very strong magic, to prove fatal. 
The Central Australian native, like those of other parts of the 
world, has a wonderful power of imagination, and though under 
ordinary circumstances he will recover from wounds such as 
would at once prove fatal to a European, yet if he once gets the 
idea firmly fixed in his mind that the very slightest wound has 
been made by a charmed spear, and that he must die, then he 
simply hes down, and does die. 
Forms of magic such as we have been hitherto dealing with 
are closely allied to those met with amongst savages generally, 
but in Central Australia there is a curious absence of a par- 
ticular form which is elsewhere, even in other parts of Australia, 
very prevalent. This relates to the use of small cuttings of 
hairs and nails, or even anything specially associated with an 
individual, as the means of working harm to him. The hair, 
for example, will be burned while incantations are muttered 
over it, the idea being that by a form of sympathetic magic the 
evil which is done to the hair may happen to the body, of which 
it once formed a part. Now the Central Australian native is 
quite innocent of this ; in fact, he not only has no fear of anyone 
getting hold of his hair, but it is his duty at certain times to 
cut it off for the purpose of presenting it to certain individuals. 
Every native wears, often as his sole article of clothing, a 
girdle of human hair, which once adorned the head of his mother- 
in-law. So far is hair from being associated with evil magic 
that, on the contrary, no one would dream of attempting to 
hurt an individual whose hair is a valuable perquisite to him. 
In Central Australia hair is only associated with what we may 
call helpful magic. When a man dies his hair is cut off, and 
made up into a girdle, called “kirra-urkna,” which means 
“orave flesh.” This, which descends to a son, is one of the 
most sacred possessions of a native, and when worn during a 
fight endows the possessor with all the warlike attributes of the 
dead warrior, and ensures to him accuracy of aim, and _ at the 
Same time destroys that of his adversary. How sacred it is 
may be judged from the fact that as yet only one has passed 
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