I06 ABORIGINES NAMES OF MINERALS AND ROCKS. 



are quoted by Ling- Roth. In the Tasmanian Enghsh 

 Dictionary it will be found that " gunta " does not mean 

 earth in the sense of a mineral, but rather the ground 

 on whic'h men are standing. the word " nata," or 

 " natie " is given with the same meaning, and we may 

 therefore omit both, not representing a mineral. From 

 the above list it will be seen that the primary words are 



Penga-na, 

 Manna-na, 



from which all the others are derived. They apparently 

 mean ""surface soil " of any kind. The Aborigines did 

 not know the meaning of the word " dirt ;" everything 

 was " earth " to them, hence we find dirt and earth as 

 synonymous. 



If we examine the derived words we have a 

 Panoga-na 



ranoga-na ^ , 



Pen(o)ga-na | ^aleetya 

 Manna-na mallye. 



As the second word means white or whitish, these 

 words mean a clay or earth of whitish colour, and a re- 

 ference to the vocabulary shows that the word " rulle "' 

 means " rough." 



Literally, Pengana rutta or Manna-na rulle means 

 '' rough earth," and as dried clayey soil is pretty 

 " rough," it may also stand for dry " mud." 



The words which stand for clay show at once that 

 they mean a whitish substance, and in the word 

 Pannoga-na we have no trouble in recognising the word 

 Pen-ga-na. It is more than probable that Pappa-lye is 

 the same word as Manna-na. 



We therefore come to the conclvision that the surface 

 soil in general was called by the 



■Eastern Tribes — Pen-ga-na, 

 Southern Tribes — Man-na -na. 



If dried and rough it became rutta or rulle, and a special 

 kind of argillaceous soil or rock — a w'hite clay — was dis- 

 tinguis'hed under the names 



Pan-(o)ga-na maleetye 

 Man-na-na mallye. 



