SOME BURIAL CUSTOMS OF THE AUSTRALIAN 

 ABORIGINES. 



By R. H. MATHEWS, L.S. 



{Read May 21, 1909.) 



Oval-shaped objects used in connection with native burials in the 

 valley of the Darling River, New South Wales, were manufactured 

 from burnt gypsum,^ reduced to a powder, and fine sand or ashes, 

 well compounded with water, just as we would mould anything of 

 the kind out of cement or plaster of paris. The necessary shape 

 could be given to the mass while plastic and then allowing it to dry 

 in the sun. These objects are in the shape of a large tgg, varying 

 in length from about three to nine inches, by a width of say two and 

 a quarter inches for the smaller ones, up to double that width for the 

 larger. (See Figs, i, 2, 3 and 4, page 314.) 



They are often approximately circular in a section through the 

 middle part, but in other cases such a section would be ovate. Some 

 of them are flattish on one or both sides and are not unlike a cake 

 baked in an elongated form. In a few of the flattened productions, 

 one side is slightly concave, but whether this was intended by the 

 maker it is difficult to say. Probably the wet mass assumed this 

 shape when drying in the sun, because the heat would naturally 

 cause the outer margin, which would dry first, to turn upward, simi- 

 larly to the way a board warps toward the sun, when exposed in a 

 free state. Nearly all the specimens I have seen were evidently 

 manufactured in the way above described, but an occasional one 

 consists of a piece of sandstone or shale, of a light color, found in 

 the bush, which required but little fashioning to bring it to the 

 required shape. 



An old aboriginal, of the Ngunnhalgu tribe, known as Harry 

 Perry by the white people, told me that these kopai objects, which he 



^ Called kopai by the natives ; often erroneously written copi and kopi by 

 the European residents of that region. 



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