Hy R. H. MATHEWS. 
souls of the infants dwell in the foliage of the trees, and 
that they are carried there by the good mountain spirits 
‘tuanyiraka,’ and their wives, ‘melbata.’ The nearest tree 
to a woman when she feels the first pain of parturition, 
she calls ‘ngirra,’ as they are under the impression that 
the “guruna,’ or soul, has then entered from it into the 
child. Such a tree is left untouched, as they believe that 
whoever should happen to break off even a single branch 
would become sick. But if the tree should be injured or 
broken down by winds or floods, that person would get ill 
whose ‘ngirra,’ the tree was.’” | 
When Rev. C. G. Teichelmann, and Rev. OC. W. Schurmann 
were engaged in missionary work among the aboriginal 
tribes in and around Adelaide, the capital of South 
Australia, in 1840, the blacks called them ‘ Pindi-meyu,’ or 
‘‘men of the den,’’ because in their white complexions and 
unusual activity, they believed that they recognised their 
forefathers returned from the habitation of the dead. 
*Pindi,’ a large den or pit, was the place of souls, and was 
situated in the far west, whence the souls of the unborn 
came, and, hovering among the grass-trees, waited for the 
hour of conception. When the infant into whom the spirit 
entered, had finished its course on earth, and was buried, 
the spirit, ‘towilla,’ returned to ‘ Pindi.” 
Rey. Geo. Taplin, speaking of the tribes about Mount 
Freeling, 300 miles northerly from Adelaide, describes how 
these spirits manage to secure a mother. A tiny spirit 
meets a woman in the bush and throws its little club at her 
foot, the end of the weapon making a little puncture under 
the great-toe nail, through which the spirit enters, and in 
due time isre-born. The entry may be under the thumb 
nail, and is accomplished in a similar manner, with the 
1 Trans., Roy. Soc., S. Australia, (Adelaide, 1891), x1v., 239. 
? Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science, (1842), I., pp. 111 and 120. 
