ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND VICTORIA.. 281 



frost. If a woman transgress this law, her eyes will become 

 bleary, and she will suffer from uterine troubles. 



The blackfellows have not mapped out the sky into con- 

 stellations in the same way as Europeans have done, but 

 there is a certain amount of method in their arrangement 

 of the stars. For example, a man and his wives, his family, 

 his weapons, his dogs, are not generally far apart. Brothers, 

 uncles and other relationships are often separated by con- 

 siderable distances. 



Among the tribes inhabiting the south-eastern portion 

 of New South Wales, « Oanis Majoris is Gundy eran ; a 

 Orionis is Gunung'ama ; a Argus is Mirridyugga, the short- 

 nosed bandicoot. The Pleiades is Wanggatti ; Milky Way, 

 Kurrewa ; the stars in Orion's Belt and Club are Yuindya. 



They have names for the Magellanic clouds. Nubecula 

 Major is Kurrug'gur, the shortnosed bandicoot. Nubecula 

 Minor is Wangalli, a kangaroo rat. At the time when 

 these star-clusters — the bandicoot and the kangaroo-rat — 

 are at their lower culmination, and therefore so near the 

 horizon that they are not noticed by untutored natives 

 living in thickly wooded country, they are supposed to have 

 gone away through the skies on a Pirrimbir expedition. 

 After they have taken revenge upon the culprit, the 

 nubecula^ come into view again. 



In the county of Kara-Kara, Victoria, there was an 

 immense pine tree growing out of the earth, the topmost 

 branches of which reached up to the sky. In the far away 

 past, people used to climb up the tree and walk about and 

 reside on the starry vault ; and blackfellows who belonged 

 to the sky occasionally descended by the tree to the earth 

 to see their friends, and remained for a while. Visits were 

 frequently made for purposes of barter between the blacks 

 who were located on the earth and those whose hunting 

 grounds were away in the sky. In short, the tree was a 



