April 17, 1879] 



NATURE 



551 



created all things, but he made no women. Bun-jil has 

 a wife named Boi-boi, a son named Biii-beal, and a 

 brother named Pal-ly-yaii, and though the creator of all 

 things, yet he had help from his son and brother. He 

 always goes about with a large knife, and after making 

 the earth he went all over it, cutting and slashing it into 

 creeks and rivers, mountains and valleys. Such, at least, 

 is the belief of the Boonooreng tribe. Coast of Victoria. 

 But, on the other hand, that of the Barwen tribe differs 

 little from the Christian conception ; for their account is 

 that Baiame (lit., the builder, shaper, cf. Sch'opfer) made 

 earth and water and sky, animals and men. " He makes 

 the rain come down and the grass grow;" he has deli- 

 vered their fathers from evil demons (cf. the mediaeval 

 doctrine of demonolog)') ; he welcomes good people to the 

 great luarrambool, /.^., watercourse and grove, in the sky — 

 the Milky Way — a paradise of peace and plenty ; and he 

 destroys the bad " (cf. Revelations, passitn). Indeed, the 

 parallel is often so striking, that a suspicion sometimes 

 arises whether these myths may not be spurious, mere 

 travesties of the Christian doctrines disseminated by the 

 missionaries amongst the natives, and improved upon by 

 them for the benefit of over-zealous collectors of popular 

 traditions. The doubt is raised in this work, but not 

 always removed. Some, however, are undoubtedly genuine 

 as, for instance, the account of the River Murray, which 

 was made by a snake. " He travelled from the head of 

 the river to the mouth, and as he went along he formed 

 the valley and the bed of the river." But in doing this 

 he disturbed the crow, which was perched on a tree, be 

 came angn', and cut him into small pieces. The pieces 

 are left where the Hindu myth leaves the turtle that sup- 

 ports the elephant upholding the globe. 



The second volume is mainly devoted to the native 

 languages, but also contains a series of appendices con- 

 sisting of a number of papers on incidental subjects sup- 

 plied by the contributors already referred to. Of these 

 the " Notes on the System of Consanguinity and Kinship 

 of the Brabrolong , Tribe,'' by A. W. Ilowitt, and the 

 monograph on " The Crania of the Natives," by Prof. 

 Halford, of the Melbourne University, are specially inter- 

 esting. The latter, which is a very valuable contribution 

 to anthropological studies, is illustrated by a series of 

 carefully made drawings of five skulls, by Major Shep- 

 herd, frcm four different points of view, and is accom- 

 panied by complete tables of measurements on the plan 

 recommended by Prof. Cleland, and for the purpose of 

 " obtaining national distinctions of a most exact descrip- 

 tion." Amongst these skulls is that of " King Jemmy," 

 of the Mordialloc tribe, which presents some very re- 

 markable peculiarities. It is of an extremely brutal type, 

 in the front view showing a mid-rib running along the 

 top, like the crest of a gorilla, and bounded on either side 

 by a temporal ridge, which, with immense orbits, nasal 

 fossae, and prognathous upper-jaw, give it a most ape-like 

 appearance. Jemmy, lately deceased, is not stated to 

 have been of an abnormal type ; and the side view, in 

 which the brutal aspect disappears, conveys rather the 

 impression of a skull of large capacity. 



The philological section, occupying altogether 220 

 pages, does not consist of a systematic treatise on the 

 native languages, but is made up of a number of papers 

 by more or less competent hands, on a large number of 



Victorian dialects. Some' of these papers, as might be 

 expected, are very sketchy and superficial, but others are 

 e.xtremely valuable, containing, besides vocabularies, 

 many grammatical features, short specimens and sen- 

 tences accompanied by verbatim and free English trans- 

 lations. Ample materials are here supplied for forming 

 at least a general idea of the nature of these idioms, and 

 often of their mutual relations to each other. It is 

 obvious that while all are strictly agglutinating, and so 

 far of imiform structure, they do not stand on the same 

 level, some being much more highly developed than 

 others. They also agree in the general employment of 

 pronominal suffixes instead of prefixes ; but this is such 

 a common feature that no conclusions can be drawn 

 from it as to their mutual affinities, still less, as has been 

 argued, for a possible relationship with the Dravidian 

 linguistic group. Owing to their different stages of de- 

 velopment, the grammar of some is far more regular and 

 consistent than that of others, and the Lake Hindmarsh 

 dialect, amongst others, is specially interesting, in its 

 present state clearly showing the growth of true inflexion 

 by the gradual absorption of detached pronominal ele- 

 ments. This will be made evident by comparing together 

 the first and second persons singular, present, and future, 

 of the two verbs zuoarta (to come) and nyd-ngd (to see) 

 which are as under : — 



T) .. I woartin yan 

 Present \ _^- ^ 



( woartin yar 



Future 



Present °y^°S^" 

 ( nyangar 



Future j ^J^^l^ 

 ( nyakmyar 



woartin jiian 

 woartin yuar 



Here we see in the first column the full pronouns yuan 

 yjiar of the future reduced in the present to yan a.nd yar, 

 while in the second column they become in both cases 

 fused with the root. It is easy to understand from this 

 example how the fusion might, in course of time, become 

 the universal law, and how the language might pass 

 thence rapidly from the* agglutinating to the purely in- 

 flecting state. 



Amongst the arguments here [advanced in support of 

 the view that all the Australian languages flow from a 

 common source is one based on their generally defective 

 numeral system. The dialect 'spoken near Wickliffe, 

 Western Victoria, has distinct words for i, 2, 3, 5, and 6 ; 

 but this seems to be almost a solitary case, and it seems 

 safe to say that as a general rule the native arithmetic is 

 limited to the first two numerals, beyond which reckoning 

 becomes a series of sums in addition, which even then 

 scarcely ever gets beyond 10. A typical instance is the 

 Lake Hindmarsh system, which runs thus : (i) Ke-yap; 

 (2) pullet; (3) pullet ke-yap i.e., 2 + i); (4) pullet pullet 

 (2 -f 2) ; (5) puUet puUet ke-yap (2 + 2 -f i), &c It is 

 also interesting to note the very general prevalence of the 

 word for i—pullet, bullat, ptilla, bulla, bolita,polail, &c., 

 occurring in most of the dialects all round the south and 

 east coasts, and reaching far inland, especially in Queens- 

 land and New South Wales. This may be accounted 

 for either by supposing that some more advanced 

 tribe at some remote period evolved the idea of 

 two, and passed it on to its neighbours, or that it had 

 been evolved before the dispersion. In the first case it 

 would afford no argument for the original imity of the 

 race ; in the second we should have to believe that since 

 the dispersion scarcely a single tribe ever got beyond that 



