208 EIGHT KEV. S. THORNTON^ D.D., ON 



ful in shape, but ornamented by lines of vari-coloured 

 material. 



His special delight, however, is in pictures ; in painting or 

 carving on trees, wood, bark, leaves, rock, hard clay, or the 

 surface of birds' eggs ; not, singularly enough, on bone. 

 The delight with which the Aborigines at our mission 

 stations adorn their huts with plain or coloured prints might 

 be thought a result of civilisation; but a corresponding taste 

 is unmistakeable in the uncivilised Australian. He smokes 

 sheets of bark, and then draws on them with his thumb-nail, 

 but with singular accuracy and spirit, the totem of his tribe, 

 the forms of vegetation, turtles, birds, fishes, reptiles, marsu- 

 pials, and men. Sometimes the representations are inten- 

 tionally grotesque. Conventional types are adopted on his 

 " message sticks " for trees, lakes, and rivers ; and such 

 devices as throwing up objects into relief by dark or white 

 back-grounds, or concentric surrounding lines, evidence the 

 true artistic spirit, while, problematically enough, all tan- 

 gential lines are carefully avoided. He manufactures paints — 

 red, white, and black — out of burnt earth, coloured tubers, 

 pipe-clay, plumbago, and charcoal (not — except rarely, and 

 in drawings commonly thought to be ancient — blue and 

 yellow), and he gives his colours metallic lustre and per- 

 manence by mixing bird- or fish-oil or fat ^\dth them. His 

 tool for carving is the opossum tooth, or flint. His circles 

 are wonderfully true; his geometrical patterns sometimes 

 beautiful, especially on (seemingly) ancient drawings, in 

 which opportunities are cleverly availed of, such as a hole in 

 the rock to draw a snake issuing, or an arm stretched out, 

 from it. Above all, there is nothing deliberately indecent 

 or revolting, in which he contrasts nobly with the artists of 

 cleverer and more cultured races. Sometimes he forms 

 patterns or figures on the flats by clearing grass away ; 

 sometimes digs them out in the sun-baked soil, or removes a 

 hard and rough outside of rock to get a better surface, or 

 moulds efiigies of snakes — like the serpentine tumuli in Ohio 

 or Missouri — in turfy ground. 



The number of aboriginal carvings and paintings in 

 different parts of Australia is simply prodigious. None, 

 however, have been found by miners in the drift. Beneath 

 the surface of the earth no remains of art have as yet, to my 

 knowledge, been discovered. 



The objects we have so far referred to present, as I have 

 said, for the most part, no particular problems for solution. 



