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UIGHT REV. S. THORNTON, D.D., ON 



I have now submitted to you enough examples. I hope, of 

 Aboriginal Australian pictorial art to justify my view, that it 

 presents problems of much interest and difficulty. In other 

 kinds of art, the Aborigines of Australia offer httle to challenge 

 attention. For music they use rude trumpets of long, hollow 

 bamboo ; wooden cymbals ; drums of rolled-out opossum 

 skins ; and a sistrum, consisting of shells with the apices 

 ground off, strung together on fibre, looped up to the 



vertebra of a dog. By this 

 handle it is held and shaken, 

 and produces a melodious 

 jingle. But the music of the 

 uncivihsed blacks, if plaintive, 

 is monotonous, and hardly 

 interesting. When taught 

 better music they delight in 

 singing it; and some of the 

 Christian blacks have been 

 trained to play, and even 

 teach, the harmonium. 



Play-acting is not unknown 

 among the blacks as a charm 

 against visits of ghosts : and 

 their dances are not without an 

 artistic element of their own. 



But now, what can be said 

 by way of inference from the 

 facts before us ? It would be 

 unscientific, indeed, to dog- 

 matise on the subject. On the 

 question of the late or early 

 date of the paintings and 

 j.j(j_ JO. carvings opinion is not a little 



divided. 

 One thing emerges, I think : it is a conclusion also drawn 

 by Mr. Fraser in his paper read before this Institute on the 

 observances of the "Bora," or ceremonial induction of a youth 

 into the privileges of manhood among the Australians, as 

 compared with similar observances among certain African 

 tribes : namely, that tlie former are only a branch of the one 

 great human family, and not .an isolated and independent 

 genus or species of " humans." As I have said before, there 

 is nothing in the essential qualities or faculties of the 



