638 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
Nor can it be said that the use of signs by the Australian 
aborigines is in any way due to paucity of language, their languages 
being fully competent to provide for every mental or material 
necessity of their life. Those who have had an opportunity of 
becoming intimately acquainted with these savages in their social 
life will agree fully with me in this statement, and no one can 
feel the slightest doubt who has heard one of their orators 
addressing an assembly of the men, and with a flow of persuasive 
eloquence moulding opinion to his will. Indeed, in some respects, 
the languages of the Australian savages are more copious than 
our own, for instance, in defining degrees of relationship, which 
our tongue groups under the same term. It is somewhat remark- 
able, and at the same time difficult, to explain, that the use of 
gesture language varies so much in different tribes of this 
continent. Some have a very extensive code of signs, which 
admit of being so used as almost to amount to a medium of . 
general communication. Other tribes have no more than those 
gestures which may be considered as the general property of 
mankind, 
The occurrence or absence of gestures as an aid or substitute 
for speech does not, so far as I can ascertain, depend upon social 
status or the locality in which any given tribe lives. But, as_to 
this, the materials which I have collected are certainly insufficient 
to form a positive opinion, being few in number, and scattered 
over a wide area. Yet, so far as I can venture to form an 
opinion from my own observations, and from the statements made 
to me by correspondents, the use of sign language 1s more common 
in Central and Eastern Australia than in the south-eastern part 
ot the continent. The very different degrees in which gesture 
language is made use of may best be seen by taking a few 
illustrations from tribes of my acquaintance. 
The Kurnai of Gippsland had no gesture language, but they 
made use of certain signs in lieu of words, when they were for 
some reason or other prevented from using or were reluctant to 
use the words themselves. Thus the messenger who conveyed 
the news of death of some individual to his friends or kindred, 
either spoke of the deceased in some roundabout manner, as the 
‘father, brother, son” (as the case might be) of “that person” 
(pointing to him) “is dead”; or, what was perhaps more common, 
owing to the objection to refer to the dead, the messenger said, 
naming the relationship, for instance, “the father of that one 
is—,” here concluding the sentence by pointing with the fore- 
finger to the ground or up to the sky. Thus intimating that he 
was buried, or that he had gone up to the ‘ Leén wruk,” or 
celestial land. I have observed that when the aborigines of 
Victoria and New South Wales have spoken to me of the great 
Supernatural Being in whom they believe as having once inhabited 
