305 



Mr. Jolin Conrick, of Nappa Merrie, Cooper Creek, 

 where several have been found, tells me that, although he 

 has lived there since the early seventies, he has never seen 

 them used or noticed by natives, and that they are known 

 there simply by the name of "Moora." Now the word 

 "Moora," in Gason's Vocabulary of the Dieri of Cooper 

 Creek, gives the meaning as Creator or Good Spirit, and as 

 "Moora Moora" is frequently mentioned in legends (re- 

 counted by Howitt), Sir J. G. Fraser, in his "Totemism and 

 Exogamous Marriage," vol. 1, points out that Gason's mean- 

 ing is erroneous, and that "Moora Moora" were ''nothing 

 more than the legendary predecessors or prototypes of the 

 Dieri," comparable to the Alcheringa ancestors of the Arunta 

 of Central Australia. 



The significance of the foregoing seems to be that the 

 objects in question are of such antiquity that their origin and 

 use are lost in the past, as regards the present aborigines, 

 and that any explanations they try to give are purely 

 imaginary. Such explanations as these: — (1) Of use in tooth 

 avulsion ceremonies (3, p. 14) ; (2) as a fetish to procure a 

 good supply of snakes, given to Gregory (3, p. 14) ; (3) cere- 

 monial use in connection with nardoo harvest (2, p. 497); 

 (4) bora message stone* (3, p. 12), show what various accounts 

 aborigines will give in their desire to impart information. 

 I think, therefore, that we may conclude that the aborigines 

 have no knowledge, even traditional, of the origin and uses 

 of the objects in question. Etheridge (3) carefully considers 

 the ten suggested uses and narrows the probabilities down 

 to one or two. 



General Description. 



At present some two to three hundred of these stones 

 exist in Museum and other collections in Australia, besides 

 many reported to have been sent to Germany from Menindie 

 some years ago. Tliere is no note of them in available 

 German ethnological literature. * 



They are all of the same character — cylindrical from 5 to 

 30 inches in length, mostly cupped at the base and composed 

 of clay, kopi, sandstone, slate, or hard quartzite. Some are 

 curved to form the Cornute form. The raw material from 

 which they have been shaped comes from the outcrops at 

 some distance from the alluvial area where they are mostly 

 found, on claypans or in the blown sandhills. Sir Douglas 

 Mawson says, for instance, that the elate must have come 

 from as far away as Cobar or Broken Hill. Those of kopi 

 are made from gypsum, with or without an admixture of 

 clay, and are sometimes quite friable on the surface. The 

 section is nearly always approximately circular. 



