ol? PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
Then the members of the Iniat Society (Tenainiat) come, each 
holding large leaves in their hands. They sing, sit down, then 
one makes a speech, and then they cant the litter on which the 
dead man is lying, and let the body fall into the grave. They do 
not touch him with their hands. The name of this ceremony is 
called Aumuma. The Iniat Society is one of the great secret 
societies of the group. The members of it are initiated when 
young during the progress of the initiation ceremonies ; they are 
taken into the bush and liberally fed with pork, shark, and dog. 
After their initiation they are never allowed to eat any of those 
articles for the rest of their life. They will not even touch food 
that has been in the same canoe with any of these animals. 
They also have to have a separate oven in which to cook all their 
food, for fear that any other oven might have been contaminated 
by any of the forbidden food being cooked in it. 
7—ON SOME CEREMONIES OF THE CENTRAL 
AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 
By J. G Frazer, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
- My esteemed friend, Mr. Lorimer Fison, has asked me to contri- 
bute a note on some anthropological subject which might be 
read at the meeting of the Australian Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science in 1900. I propose, therefore, to make a 
few remarks on some of the customs of the Central Australian 
aborigines as they are described in the recent and admirable 
work of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, a work of inestimable value 
to every student of the early history of mankind, and one which 
does honour not merely to the author, but to Australia. 
First, I should like to say something about the Intichiuma 
ceremonies, the discovery and description of which form, per- 
haps, the most novel, and certainly one of the most important 
features in the work of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. The general 
intention of these ceremonies is to increase the supply of food by 
multiplying the numbers of the plants and animals which are 
eaten by the natives, and, further, to procure a sufficient supply 
of rain, and probably, also, though this seems not yet to be 
positively made out, a supply of wind, sunshine, fire, and of 
everything else that the savage requires. The points of interest 
about these ceremonies are many. In the first place, they are 
' performed exclusively by men who have for their totem the par- 
ticular object with which the ceremony is concerned; for 
example, the ceremonies for the multiplication of kangaroos and 
emus are performed by men of the kangaroo and emu totems 
