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offspring are Pultara. A Pultara may only marry a Coomara. 

 If male the children are Pooninga, if female Parula. Similar 

 rules prevail in "Western Australia, in Queensland amongst the 

 southern tribes, and amongst the Dieyerie ; no doubt they 

 exist elsewhere. The custom reduced to simple terms is that 

 children of either sex always take their mother's family name, 

 and a man cannot marry a woman of his own family name. 

 Sir G-eorge Grrey, in dwelling on this circumstance, notices in 

 it a coincidence with customs which prevail amongst the North 

 American Indians. It is stated in Mr. Taplin's work (on the 

 authority of the Rev. Mr. Tison) that it exists amongst the 

 Tamil and Telugu population of Southern India, as well as 

 amongst the natives of Fiji and the Friendly Islands. How it 

 came to Australia is one of those mysteries which probably 

 will never be cleared up. 



The natives in general have no notion of accumulating 

 property except as far as relates to their weapons for 

 hunting and war, and those few articles made by the women 

 in their rude domestic economy. In the Interior, however, 

 a sort of trade is carried on amongst distant tribes. In the 

 North one association of tribes supplies another at a distance 

 with shields and other arlicles through the agency of an inter- 

 mediate tribe, receiving at their hands supplies of red ochre, 

 which is used in some of their ceremonies, but which is not to 

 be found in the country in which the shields are made. The 

 Dieyerie tribe have a sort of trade among themselves, but it 

 seems to begin and end with a love of novelty without leading 

 to accumulation. It has already been pointed out that wives 

 are frequently bought and sold. Some of the tribes that have 

 been met with in the Interior have shown themselves to be 

 peaceable and friendly to white men. Such natives were met 

 with by Bourke and Wills, and some by the Overland Tele- 

 graph Construction party, and to a friendly tribe the safety of 

 Colonel Warburton's party was due. Asa rule, however, they 

 are hostile to all strangers, cruel, and treacherous. They are, 

 moreover, accomplished thieves, taking by stealth or stratagem 

 any of the coveted articles commonly seen in the hands of 

 white men, when they cannot obtain them by murdering the 

 possessors. Prom the testimony of writers who had a know- 

 ledge of the natives of Australia in New South Wales before 

 the foundation of this province, it seems clear that individual 

 natives actually possessed property in the land on which they 

 lived, as distinct from that of the tribe. The same fact existed 

 in Western Australia, and it was officially stated to exist in 

 South Australia. The evidence is to be found in the second 

 report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons on 

 South Australia. Certain it is that in all cases the intrusion of 



