1900.] MATHEWS—SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 637 
Both male and female urine is applied externally in several kinds 
of sickness, and is believed to be an excellent remedy. At the 
initiation ceremonies of many tribes the novices are made to drink 
the urine of the men, and also to eat human excrement.? 
In several districts, when a boy reaches seven or eight years of 
age or upward and dies, his mother must submit to the plucking 
out of the hair of the pubes by the people of her own tribe. 
Although the rites and customs described in the foregoing pages 
may appear very horrible to us, yet we should remember that the 
savage has been brought up amid similar scenes from his childhood, 
which causes him to view them in a different light from ours. To 
him they have all the sanctity and force of divine law; and any 
neglect on his part to conform to long-established custom would 
bring down upon him the hostility of the community, and subject 
him to all the retributive terrors of superstition. 
REFERENCE TO THE Map. 
The map to which these references apply is Plate VI, accom- 
panying my paper on the ‘‘ Divisions of the South Australian Ab- 
origines,’’ published in No. 161 of the present volume of the 
PROCEEDINGS of this Society, pp. 78-93. 
The region within which circumcision is performed, and also 
that in which the additional rite of subincision is practiced, are 
plainly delineated upon the map in question and fully explained in 
_the letter-press at p. 93. 
The map also shows the Narrinyeri nation, V, in which the rite 
of depilation or hair-plucking is in operation, which also extends 
into the part of the Booandik nation, VI, which is contiguous on 
the south. 
Scarring the body is in vogue over the entire territory delineated 
on the map, but is carried out with greater ceremonial in some 
parts than in others, 
Initiation of women is also practiced over all the country repre- 
sented by the map, but the more rigorous forms of it, detailed in 
the letter-press, belong to the immense districts west and north of 
Port Augusta, reaching to the boundary of South Australia in both 
these directions. | 
In the northern part of the Kokatha nation, among the Hillary, 
1 American Anthropologist, Washington, Vol. ix, p. 339. 
