98 ELUOT Smith, Distribution of Mummification. 



were intimately related to mummification and form part 

 of the ritual genetically linked to it. 



Dr. Hamlyn-Harris, the Director of the Queensland 

 Museum, gives an account (27) of the two mummies from 

 the Torres Straits, which are now in Brisbane ; and he 

 adds further interesting information which he obtained 

 from Mr. J. S. Bruce, of Murray Island, who was also one 

 of Dr. Haddon's informants. During my recent visit to 

 Australia Dr. Hamlyn-Harris very kindly gave me every 

 facility for examining these two mummies (as well as the 

 Australian mummies in the Queensland Museum) ; and I 

 also examined another specimen in the Macleay Museum 

 of the University of Sydney. I am preparing a full report 

 on all of these interesting specimens. 



From the Torres Straits the practice of mummification 

 spread to Australia, as Flower (19), Frazer (22), Howitt 

 (see Hertz, 33), Roth (71) and Hamlyn-Harris (28), among 

 others, have described. Roth says " Desiccation is a form 

 of disposal of the dead practised only in the case of very 

 distinguished men. After being disembowelled and dried 

 by fire the corpse is tied up and carried about for months." 

 (71, p. 393). The mummy was painted with red ochre 

 (Fraser, 22). 



In Roth's photographs, as well as in the mummies 

 which I have had the opportunity of examining, the 

 embalming-incision was made in the characteristically 

 Egyptian situation in the left flank. In one of the 

 mummies in the Brisbane Museum (see 28, plate 6) the 

 head is severely damaged. Examination of the speci- 

 men indicates that incisions had been deliberately made. 

 Perhaps it was an attempt to remove the brain, which 

 ended in destruction of the cranium. 



A curious feature of Australian embalming is that the 

 body was always flexed, and not extended as in the Torres 



