ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND VICTORIA. 279 



rations. A love of the supernatural seems to be born in 

 the human breast, and the Australian natives are no excep- 

 tion. The young people of the audience listen so atten- 

 tively that they are themselves able, in years long after, 

 to repeat the stories to another generation. In this way 

 the star myths and other native legends have been handed 

 down from time immemorial. 



Conspicuous stars and star clusters all the way along the 

 zodiacal belt, have well-known names and traditions. 

 Moreover, each star figuring in the myths belongs to a 

 phratry, section, clan or other subdivision, precisely the 

 same as the people of the tribe among whom the tale is 

 current. The names of the subdivisions, as well as the 

 names of the stars, change amongst the people inhabiting 

 different parts of the country. Sometimes the legends and 

 nomenclature of the stars will be substantially the same 

 among several adjoining tribes over an extensive region. 

 In other instances, not only are the names of the stars 

 different, but the traditions and the stars connected with 

 them are altogether divergent. 



The aborigines have no methods of accurately measuring 

 the annual circuit of the sun, but they know when the cold 

 weather commences ; then the period when the flowers 

 come, and plants shoot forth buds ; and lastly, they realize 

 the time of the hot weather. They have discovered that 

 these periods follow each other in a certain fixed order 

 year after year ; and the stars which occupy the northern 

 sky in the cold winter evenings travel on, and are succeeded 

 by others in the following season ; and that these are again 

 displaced by different constellations during the warm even- 

 ings of summer. 



The aborigines of the Clarence River have a story that 

 the Pleiades, when they set with the sun, go away to bring 

 the winter ; and that when these stars reappear early in 



