166 REPORT — 1872. 



any man living, informs me that although the general plot of a story, like the 

 grammatical construction of a language, may with doubt and difficulty be traced 

 throuo-h many variations into distant countries, the details in all that relates to 

 names of the heroes, costumes, and implements, and all the material events con- 

 nected with the stories are subject to such radical changes as to render them totally 

 untrustworthy in point of date and sequence. Mr. Tylor also, in his interesting 

 and valuable work on primitive culture, has stated his inability, by means of myths 

 and relio-ions, to trace in the majority of cases the connexion between early races ; 

 and this circumstance, fairly and rationally as he has placed it before us in all his 

 writings, has, I venture to think, led many who rely mainly on this class of evi- 

 dence to incline too strongly towards the hypothesis of independent origin (more 

 so at least than I should be disposed to do), and to make insufficient allowance for 

 the rapidly recurring changes produced by the imperfect transmission of ideas, 

 through the operation of which all trace of tlie channels of communication would 

 be rapidly obliterated, and those mj'ths which, from being best suited to the mental 

 condition of the people, had survived in distant countries would present the ap- 

 pearance of spontaneous and independent origin. In all this class of anthropolo- 

 gical evidence Mr. Tylor has shown that the invention of writing and other con- 

 comitants of impi'oved culture have been the means of introducing an element of 

 stability and permanence, so that we are presented with the phenomena of progress 

 in the direction of unity and .simplicity as opposed to diversity and complexity. 

 On the other hand, the language of the arts may be said to have been a written 

 language from the time of the first appearance of man upon the earth ; less liable 

 to variation in transmission, the links of connexion between lower and higher 

 forms have been preserved and handed down to us from the remotest period of 

 time, and by testifying to the comparatively steady and continuous development 

 which has taken place, encourage us to hope that by diligently prosecuting our 

 studies into this department of anthropology, every relic of prehistoiic ages may 

 eventually be made to mark its own place in sequence, if not in time. 



The greater stability of the material arts as compared with the Huctuations in 

 the language of a people in a state of prinneval savagery is well shown by a con- 

 sideration of the weapons of the Australians and the names by which they are 

 known in the several parts of that continent. As I have already mentioned, these 

 people, from the simplicity of their arts, afford us the only living examples of what 

 we may presume to have been the characteristics of a primitive people. Their 

 weapons, respecting the distribution of which we have more accurate information 

 than we have of their vocabularies, are the same throughout the continent ; the 

 shield, the throwing-stick, the spear, the boomerang, and their other weapons 

 difi'er only in being thicker, broader, flatter, or longer in different localities; but 

 whether seen on the east or the west coast each of these classes of weapons is 

 easily recognized by its form and uses. On the other hand, amongst the innu- 

 merable languages and dialects spoken by these people, it would appear that almost 

 every tribe has a different name for the same weapon. The narrow panyiug-shield, 

 which consists of a piece of wood with a place for the hand in the centre, in South 

 Australia goes by the name of Heileman, in other parts it is known under the name 

 of Mulabakka, in Victoria it is Turnmung, and on the west coast we have Muru- 

 kanye and Tamarang for the same implement very slightly modified in size and 

 form. Referring to the comparative table of Australian languages compiled by the 

 Rev. George Taplin, in the first Number of the ' Journal of the Anthropological 

 Institute,' we find the throwing-stick, which on the Murray River is known by the 

 name of Yova, on the Lower Darling is Yarrum, in New South Wales it is Wom- 

 murrur, in Victoria Kamck, on Lake Alexandrina Taralye, among.st the Adelaide 

 tribes, South Australia, it is Midla, in other parts of South Australia it is called 

 Ngeweangko, and in King George's Sound Miro. None of the weapons show less 

 variety of form than the boomerang; on the Murray River this is known by the 

 name of Wanya, on the Lower Darling Yarrumba, on the North Darling Mulla- 

 Murraie, on Lake Pando Wadna, on the Liverpool Plains Burran, in Victoria 

 Kertom, on Lake Alexandrina Panketye, and in King George's Sound Kyli. 

 Between the majority of these names it will be seen that it is impossible to trace 

 the faintest resemblance of sound. Yet no one, it is presumed, would bt; so 



