210 



noticed in connection with those in the second shelter. Figs. >> 

 and 9 are clearly intended for birds of different kinds. In the 

 former the even lower contour makes it appear as if the artist 

 had intended to picture the bird as resting upon the water; 

 but the appearance is really due to the cutting off of the lower 

 part of the design by obliteration. There were also pigmen- 

 tary indications of other drawings in this shelter, but they had 

 become so greatly obliterated as to be indecipherable; and 

 they have, therefore, been omitted from the plate. In the 

 upper part of the back wall some drawings had evidently be- 

 v€ome obscured by numerous mud nests of wasps and swallows. 



About 150 yards lower down the stream, and at a rather higher 

 level above the river, is a considerably smaller shelter, which 

 also contains a few discernible drawings. In this a consider- 

 able recent fall of earth from above has ipartly blocked the 

 entrance, and proba.bly also raised the level of the floor, for it 

 is now impossible to stand upright in the shelter. Moreover, 

 the raising of the floor has brought it within a few inches of the 

 lowest drawings. To have drawn the designs in the position 

 which these now occu^py would have almost required the artist 

 to have assumed the prone position. 



The drawings in this cave (nos. 10-13), which are show^n in 

 the inset in Plate iv., are also> done in red ochre ; but in 

 these there is no marginal white. Fig. 12 again repeats a 

 bird track, and possibly 13 may also be zoomorphic in origin, 

 but the reproduction, which has unintentionally made the 

 figure rather more symmetrical than the reality, evokes un- 

 duly this suggestion. 



Figs. 10 and 11 may possibly belong to the class of designs 

 described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (1). called ('huringa 

 m-i/iia bv the Arunta. which are regarded as sacred from 

 their association ^^^th totems. The former appears like a 

 simple form of two figures represented on plate 131 of the work 

 just referred to. Their meaning was unknown to the writers 

 beyond the fact that they were connected with the honey- 

 ant totem, of the Warramunga tribe in the neighbourhood of 

 Barrow Creek. In these the vertical stripe bisects three 

 series of concentric circles. 



On digging into the floor of both caves indications were 

 found of former occupancy in the shape of pieces of charred 

 wood, a few fragments of fresh water mussel shells, and a frag- 

 ment of the jaw of a small rodent animal. On the surface of 



{D Native Tribes of Central Austraha, p. 614. Ax. 



