THE ABORIGINES 01' AUSTRALIA. 27 



for English civilisation. They have been despoiled, degraded, and 

 neglected by the Anglo-Saxon race who occupy their lands. It is 

 well that this paper has been introduced to the notice of the 

 members of this Institute, if only to give new impetus and a new 

 motive to the movement at the antipodes for more righteous and 

 brotherly attention to the material and spiritual wants of our fellow- 

 subjects, the aborigines of Australia. 

 The meeting was then adjourned. 



REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 



BY THE KEY. MYRON EELLS 

 (Of Pacific University, United States). 



I have been very much interested in this paper, because it bears 

 strongly on a subject on which I prepared a paper, which was read in 

 1885 (see Transactions, vol. xix.), the bearing of the religious ideas 

 of the natives on the unity of the race, and other principles of the Bible, 

 my paper having had reference to the natives of America, while this 

 one refers to those of Australia. It seems evident from their geo- 

 graphical position, that, next to America, the islands of the Pacific 

 Ocean are the most difficult of access by immigrants from that part 

 of Asia where it is believed that Adam was created, and hence the 

 most likely to be the centres of other human creations, if there were 

 such. Hence, everything which tends to show that the inhabitants 

 of these islands were formerly connected with that part of the 

 human race which inhabits the Eastern continent is specially valu- 

 able. Realising this, and my interest in the subject having grown 

 since I wrote that paper, I have, as opportunity offered, examined 

 some works on several of those islands, in order to see how much their 

 religion agrees with that of the Bible. Mr. A. W. Howitt, F.L.S., 

 F.G S., in a paper in the Smithsonian Report for 1883, on the Aus- 

 tralian group relations, speaks of their belief in a Supi'eme Being, 

 and their very great reverence for Him, even in pronouncing His 

 name, and he gives this name in the languages of several of the 

 tribes. W. B. Wildy, in a work on Australasia and the Oceanic 

 region (p. 116), says that the Larrakeyahs and Woolnahs do not 

 practise circumcision, but all the other tribes do ; and that the 

 custom is purely traditional. He adds that they are afraid of an 

 evil spirit called Browl ; and that under the trees, up which they 

 bury their dead, they will smooth down the grass in order to detect 



