604 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
protected by dried kangaroo-skins. During days of rain they 
kept under shelter, cowering over their fires. The men smeared 
their heads with grease and red ochre, partly for ornament and 
partly as a substitute for cleanliness. Bits of wood, feathers, 
flowers, and kangaroo-teeth were inserted in the hair, which was 
separated into tufts, rolled and matted together. This decoration 
was denied the women, whose hair was cropped close with a sharp 
crystal, some on one side of the head only, in others like a priest’s 
tonsure. Several methods of ornamenting the body were adopted 
by the different tribes; patches of ochre and grease formed a 
considerable portion of such adornment. A necklace was worn 
called Aerrina, composed of pearly-blue shells (Zlenchus 
ivisodontes), bored by the eyetooth, and strung on the sinews, of the 
kangaroo. These shells were cleansed, and received a high polish. 
The arms and implements of the natives were of the simplest 
description. The waddy was a short piece of wood, reduced and 
notched towards the grasp, and slightly rounded at the point. 
The spear, nine or ten feet long, was pointed at the larger end, 
straightened by the teeth, and balanced with great nicety. The 
spearman, while poising the weapon, held others in his left hand, 
prepared for instant use. The spear, thus poised, seemed. for a 
few seconds to spin, and would strike at sixty yards with an 
unerring aim. 
In the Tasmanian museum there is an aboriginal stone hatchet 
having a wooden handle, secured with gum of the grass-tree 
(Xanthorrhea australis). The head of the axe is made of green- 
stone, and is double-edged. There are also waddies and hunting 
spears, ten to fifteen feet in length, and made of the tall straight- 
grained Leptospermum, or tea-tree, of the colony. 
In procuring foods the natives were agile and dexterous. The 
opossum was hunted by the women, and in doing so they ascended 
trees of an immense height. They first threw round the tree a 
rope of kangaroo sinews twice its girth, which they held in one 
hand ; then, having cut the first notch for the toe, they raised 
themselves up by the rope, in an attitude sufficiently perpendicular 
to carry the hatchet or the stone on the head ; they then cut a 
second notch, and by a jerk of the bight of the rope raised it up ; 
thus, step by step, they reached the branch, over which the loose end 
of the rope being cast, they were enabled to draw themselves round. 
The acquaintance of the aborigines with arts of any kind was 
of the most limited description, being confined to the fabrication 
of their simple arms, baskets, canoes, ropes of kangaroo sinews, 
and necklaces. The baskets were made of the long leaves of a 
cyperaceous plant called cutting-grass, very neatly woven together ; 
and the necklaces of small, beautiful shells, iridescent, the purple 
tint preponderating. In the natural state they have no great 
beauty, but after the removal of their outer coating their appear- 
ance was quite altered. 
