PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 603 
through age and fidelity to the tribe; but it was only the third 
class which was initiated into the hidden mysteries, and possessed 
the power of regulating its affairs. Secrecy was usually observed 
in the ceremonies of admitting the youth to the first class, and in 
raising those of the first to the second, but the secrecy was most 
rigidly observed whenever an initiation into the third class took 
place. 
The customs attending births, marriages, sickness, funerals and 
feasts were traditionary, and rigorously adhered to. 
SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 
The aborigines generally selected the banks of a river or 
lagoon for their encampment. Hach family had its fire, hunted 
separately, and erected a hut for its own accommodation. On 
mountains, and beside the sea-shore, they lodged in caverns, or 
where these were not found, as in the open country, they 
constructed huts, or rather screens. These were of bark, half- 
circular, and gathered at top, and supported by stakes ; and in 
front they kindled a fire. These huts formed rude villages, of 
some seventeen to forty together ; the former number being raised 
by a tribe of seventy, from four to five must have lodged under 
one shelter. Some, found at the westward, resembling beehives, 
and thatched, were evidently for permanent occupation. Water 
was drawn for the sick in shells; those in health threw them- 
selves on the bank and drank as they lay. Fire was preserved 
usually by carrying a brand; and it is believed they were not 
ignorant of the mode of producing fire by friction. 
As to food, their appetite was voracious. A woman was 
watched one day, during which she devoured about fifty eggs of 
the sooty petrel (Procellaria sp.) ; and an eye-witness beheld a 
child, eight years old, eat a kangaroo-rat and attack a crayfish. 
Animals and birds were roasted by being thrown on the fire with 
their skins on. Shell-fish were also roasted. The natives were 
very partial to a large white grub found in rotten wood; and 
they used as food various roots, as an indigenous potato, a fungus 
called native bread (MZylitta australis), which tasted like cold 
boiled rice. The animals on which they subsisted chiefly were the 
emu, kangaroo, wallaby, bandicoot, and the opossum, the latter 
living in trees. The women were accustomed to dive for shell- 
fish, which they placed in a rude basket tied round the waist. 
Mounds of oyster-shells, the accumulation of ages, are met with 
on various parts of the sea-coasts. 
During the winter the natives visited the sea-shore, disappearing 
from the interior about June, and returning to their settlement 
in October. 
As to dress and ornaments. In summer both sexes went 
entirely naked, and in the winter the shoulders and waist were 
