1900.] MATHEWS—SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 633 
During the afternoon of one or more of the days of this period the 
novitiates are carried a short distance from the camp, and placed 
lying down on bushes thickly strewn on the ground, and rugs 
spread over them. A man then sits down beside each novice, and 
commences pulling out the hair from the pubes, under the arms 
and the incipient beard ; when one man gets tired he is replaced 
by another. Beeswax or gum is used upon the ends of the fingers 
to facilitate catching the hair, which is pulled out singly. The 
men of the novitiates’ own tribe do not take part in the hair- 
plucking operation, this duty devolving upon the men of the dif- 
ferent strange tribes present. The pluckers must be men who 
have been initiated in the same way at previous gatherings, and are 
the potential brothers-in-law of the novices who have been 
assigned to them. Some of the head-men of each tribe sit on the 
ground near by, directing the proceedings, and a bullroarer is 
sounded in the vicinity. The hair pulled out of the bodies of 
each youth is kept carefully by itself, and is given into the charge 
of one of his relatives, in the same way that the extracted tooth is 
disposed of in other districts. When the plucking of the hair has 
been completed the novices are raised to their feet by their guar- 
dians and other men, amid the shouts of all present. Each 
graduate is then painted and invested with the usual regalia of a 
man of the tribe. 
The novices are then cautioned against divulging the details of 
what they have passed through to any person except the initiated. 
They are now taken to a place where the women have formed a 
new camp, where they are met by their mothers and other female 
relations, who light fires to the windward of them, enveloping 
them all in a dense smoke, caused by placing green grass, bushes 
or weeds on the burning wood. The graduates have to pass 
through this ordeal of depilation at not less than two or three 
different meetings of the tribes for that purpose before they can 
be admitted to full membership and be permitted to take a wife. 
While the novitiates are going through their course of initiation 
in the bush with the old men they are shown the sacred bullroarer, 
and certain crystalline quartz stones which are supposed to protect, 
or in some way to confer magical powers upon, their possessor. 
In the Narrinyeri, and in the Adjadurah nation adjoining them 
on the west, marriages are regulated by the old men in accordance 
with fixed rules. The sons and daughters of particular women are 
