120 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
when they died then their spirits in the same way remained in 
company, occupying certain more or less definite localities. 
Now, both amongst these ancestral men of the Alcheringa and 
amongst their living descendants it is very clearly recognised 
that there is a close relationship existing between the man and 
the totem, and that by means of the performance of certain 
magic ceremonies the men can secure the increase of the totem— 
a matter of very great importance when the fact is remembered 
that it is these very totemic animals and plants which serve as 
food and drink. To these ceremonies the name of Intichiuma is 
given, and they may be regarded as the central magical or 
sacred ceremonies of the tribes in which they occur. In the 
dntichiuma ceremony having reference to any particular totem 
only the initiated men of that totem may take part. One 
example will suffice to illustrate the nature of the ceremony. In 
the southern part of the James Range, a few miles to the north 
of the Finke River, there is a aglow cave, which from time 
immemorial has been associated with the Kangaroo totem, 
and here at certain seasons determined upon by the old man, 
who is regarded as the head of the kangaroo men, the latter 
assemble to perform the ceremony. First of all the leader and 
another man climb a little way up the face of the steep hill by 
the side of the cave, and there each of them rubs with his hands 
one of two projecting rocks, one of which represents a male and 
the other afemale kangaroo. Then they descend and seat them- 
selves along with the other older men in front of the cave, at the — 
back of which there runs a ledge of rock. The younger men 
climb on to the latter, the face of which is decorated wah alter- 
nate stripes of red and white, the former representing the fur, 
and the latter the bones of the kangaroo. At a signal from the 
leader the young men all open veins in their arms, ‘and allow the 
blood to flow down in streams over the face of the ledge. 
Tradition says that in the Alcheringa the body of a great kan- 
garoo, which had been killed by kangaroo men who wished to 
eat it, was carried in to this spot, and that the rocky ledge sprang 
up to mark the spot, the spirit part of the animal remaining in 
the rock, and, further, it is said that at a later time a large 
number of other kangaroos came here and went into the earth, 
their spirit parts also going into the rock, which is thus, as it 
were, charged with spirit kangaroos, which can be born again 
just as spirit men and women are. The object of the letting of 
blood is to drive these spirit kangaroos out, and so to increase 
the supply of the animal which gives its name to the totem. It 
is a most remarkable fact that the members of every totem have 
a similar magic ceremony, so that it practically comes to this— 
the members of the totem are charged with the duty of ensuring 
by magic means the supply of the totemic animal or plant. 
That kangaroo men should be charged with the duty of looking 
