PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 601 
MATURITY. 
No particular age has been fixed for the attainment of maturity 
by either sex, but some ceremonies attended the initiation of the 
young males into the rights and privileges of manhood. They 
were given over to the old women, who cut them on the thighs, 
shoulders, and muscles of the breast with stone-cutting imple- 
ments, and thus raised cicatrices. These scarifications were 
intended as ornaments. 
The women had raised cicatrices on their bodies, but it is 
uncertain whether they were purposely made and intended as 
ornaments, or were the result of the cuttings and bleedings to 
which they were subjected when sick. 
There is no evidence of circumcision having been known to the 
aborigines. 
MARRIAGE. 
There were restrictions on marriage amongst the aborigines. 
A man was not permitted to marry a woman of his own tribe. 
Little or nothing beyond this is known of the customs which the 
men followed in selecting wives ; but it is believed that, as in the 
case of other barbarous races, they often resorted to violence in 
choosing their brides. A man had usually but one wife, but 
polygamy was not unknown. Polyandry, or something very like 
it, also existed ; and widows, it is affirmed, were, unless given in 
marriage, the common property of the males of the tribes into 
which they had married. 
The women were seldom accompanied by many children; but 
there is no reason to suppose that, in their natural condition, 
they were less prolific than people of other races. 
Strzelecki relates the remarkable fact that after intercourse 
has taken place between an aboriginal female and a European 
male, the former loses the power of conception on the renewal of 
intercourse with the male of her own race. This writer mentions 
that hundreds of instances are on record among other aboriginal 
races in support of this hypothesis. This curious theory is refuted 
by Lieut. M. C. Friend, R.N., in a paper read by him before the 
Tasmanian Society on 10th March, 1847, “ On the Decrease of 
the Aborigines of Tasmania,” quoting two instances to the 
contrary which came under his notice while visiting Flinders 
Island. He writes :—‘ One, a black woman named Sarah, the 
mother of four half-caste children by a sealer, who afterwards 
married a man of her own race, by whom she had three black 
children. The other, a black woman named Harriet, who 
similarly had two half-caste children, and afterwards married a 
black man, and became the mother of a healthy black infant.” 
Bonwick, in opposition to Strzelecki’s theory, quotes the following 
letter from Mr. Hagenauer, German missionary at Gippsland :— 
