LXXXVIII PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



are regarded as typifying distinct periods. Further still, tlie 

 remarkably distinct art and craft work and scheme of design 

 characteristic of various parts of Australia, as represented in the 

 beautifully carved shield of Victorian and Murray River natives; 

 the characteristic design on the shields of certain tribes in Queens- 

 land; the bark drawings, purely Australian in their motive, of 

 the Alligator River and other tribes in the far North; the 

 characteristic zigzag pattern and square designs of Western Aus- 

 tralia; the concentric circles and spirals of Central Australia; 

 the varieties in the form of boomerangs and other weapons show 

 an endless capacitj^ for variation and invention. 



If, for example, in various groups of tribes we found, say, the 

 knocking out of a tooth at initiation associated always with count- 

 ing descent in the female line, and with ground burial and other 

 customs, it w^ould be possible to realize the existence in past times 

 of a series of migrations of peoples bringing with them such 

 customs as these; but this is exactly what w^e do not find. We 

 meet with a hopeless mixture and combination of customs, so that 

 if the existence of a large number of these be due to the influence 

 of contact with various groups of immigrant peoples, we muSt 

 allow for a most extraordinary number of such, and must recog- 

 nise also the most remarkable way in which one tribe, or group 

 of tribes, picked out and adopted one special feature from one 

 immigrant people, and others from other groups. 



Instead of the history of Australian culture and its nature 

 being rendered fa,r easier to understand on the theory of successive 

 migrations, the reverse, taking all things into consideration, would 

 seem to be pre-eminently true. 



It is much simpler to account for all this complexity, which 

 really becomes simplicity when we investigate the beliefs and 

 customs of the tribes, or groups of tribes, one by one, on the same 

 theory that we have already applied to the explanation of the 

 remarkable diversity of structure amongst the marsupial fauna, 

 which has most certainly not been influenced from outside since 

 its little differentiated ancestors first reached Australia. Bateson 

 has said,(^) "I feel no reasonable doubt that, though we may 

 have to forgo a claim to variations by addition of factors, yet 

 variation, both by loss of factors and by fractionation of factors, 

 is a genuine phenomenon of contemporary nature. If, then, we 

 have to dispense, as seems likely, with any addition from without, 

 we must begin seriously to consider whether the course of evolu- 

 tion can at all reasonably be represented as an unpacking of an 

 original complex which contained within itself the whole range 

 of diversity which living things present." 



(») Presidential Address. Report, B.A.A.S., Australia, 1914, page 17. 



