PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 607 
An excellent authority, Dr. Milligan, who lived in familiar 
intercourse with the aborigines both at Flinders Island and 
Oyster Cove, said he had ascertained that previous to their inter- 
course with Europeans they distinctly entertained the idea of 
immortality as regarded the soul or spirit of man. Their legends 
proved also their belief in a host of malevolent spirits whose 
abodes were caverns and dark recesses of the dense forests, clefts 
in rocks on the mountain tops, &c. At the same time they 
reposed unqualified trust in the tutular agencies of the spirits of 
their departed friends. To these guardian spirits they gave the 
generic name “ Warruwah,” an aboriginal term like the Latin 
word wmbra, signifying shade, shadow, ghost or apparition. 
PHILOLOGY. 
According to Strzelecki, the language of the aborigines was 
highly sonorous and euphonious, and he would class it among 
those called transpositive—those which are‘independent of articles 
and pronouns, the case and person being determined by the 
difference in the inflexion. 
R. H. Davies remarks that the language of the natives is very 
soft and liquid, as loro-loubra, a white woman ; loro-whanga, a 
white mountain ; ringarooma, booby alla, &c. The dialects are 
numerous, and the language in different parts of the island appears 
to be wholly different ; to the westward they call water ‘“ mocha” 
and “‘mogana”; to the eastward, “lina.” The aborigines acquired 
great facility in pronouncing English words, but they could not 
pronounce the hard letters as d and s: ; doctor they pronounced 
“togata” or “tokatu”; sugar, “tuguna”; tea, “ teana.” 
The best authority, however, on ane dee and language of 
the aboriginal tribes of Tasmania was the late Dr. Joseph 
Milligan, F.L.S., who was for some time in charge of the 
establishment at Flinders Island, and subsequently, upon the 
removal of the natives to the mainland, became medical superin- 
tendent to the settlement at Oyster Cove. Dr. Milligan com- 
municated to the Royal Society of Tasmania a copious vocabulary 
of dialects of aboriginal tribes of Tasmania, tabulated alpha- 
betically, together with numerous short sentences in the native 
language, with their English equivalents, and also some names of 
places and persons in both languages, the whole paper extending 
over 36 pages, and printed in the Transactions of that Society for 
the year 1854. 
Dr. Milligan explains that perfect confidence may be placed 
by ethnologists in the words and sentences thus recorded by the 
method which he adopted of submitting them to several 
aborigines, first giving the English words and then taking down 
from them the corresponding native words. This, of course, 
he remarks, was a most tedious method to pursue, but it was the 
only plan which gave a fair chance of precision and truthfulness. 
