ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND VICTORIA. 339 



the fleeting spirit of a dying person and so save his life. 

 Others professed to chase away supernatural enemies by 

 their menaces and gramarye. Others pretended they could 

 ameliorate the cold of winter by casting hot coals towards 

 certain stars. Some professed to be able to cure disease 

 by enchantment. Others again claimed to have the power 

 of bringing rain and causing the food supply to increase by 

 means of magic arts. 



Stories similar in character to those recounted in the 

 following pages are found in every tribe throughout all the 

 Australian States. Necessary local variations are intro- 

 duced in different districts, to accord with divergent prac- 

 tices and modes of living, but the radical elements are the 

 same. Moreover, the animals which took part in these 

 folk-tales, everywhere in Australia had the same phratries, 

 sections, clans, etc., as the people of the tribe where the 

 tale is current. 



In every part of Australia which I have visited, the bat 

 and the night-jar hold a peculiar place in the superstitions 

 of the people and figure largely in their stories. The 

 former is the friend of all the men and the latter of all the 

 women. In some tribes the woodpecker (tree-creeper) is 

 substituted for the small night-jar. Rev. L. E. Threlkeld 

 was the first to discover and report these specific totems 

 of the two sexes. In his grammar and vocabulary published 

 in 1834 he states: — " Tilmun, a small bird the size of a 

 thrush is supposed by the women to be the first maker of 

 women, or to be a woman transformed after death into 

 that bird ; it runs up trees like a woodpecker. These birds 

 are held in veneration by the women only. The bat, kolung- 

 kolung, is held in veneration on the same ground by the 

 men, who suppose the animal (bat) a mere transformation." 



Baiame. — A little better than half a mile westerly from 

 the railway station at Byrock, on the Western Railway 



