1883.) On the Aborigines of Cooper's Creek, Australia. 1221 
do much to reduce this apparent chaos to intelligible order. But 
they are dying out so fast that this will soon be impossible. 
Wherever the white man treads they disappear. They seem to 
have no power of adaptation whatever. Then again the customs 
practiced among many of them are not calculated to increase 
their number. Much has been told about them, but the natural 
history of the race is still an unwritten book. 
The tribes inhabiting the Cooper’s Creek region more or less 
resemble each other in their manners and customs. The Die- 
yerie (pronounced Dee-yerry) is one of the largest, and may be 
taken as a type of the rest. Aside from their language they can be 
distinguished from others in the immediate vicinity by a practice 
they have of knocking out the two median incisor teeth in each jaw. 
This habit is common, however, among other tribes in different 
parts of Australia. - Why it is done or how the practice originated 
they do not seem to know themselves. At any rate it is very 
races. Their skulls are dolicocephalic, very prognathous, and 
have immense supra-orbita] ridges. The mastoid process is al- 
Ways large and rough. The malar bones are also very prominent. 
The teeth are large and strong, but are always worn down to flat 
Surfaces on account of the sand, &c., which they eat mixed with 
their food. Their heads appear to be large, owing to the wavy 
and bushy hair, eyebrows, ‘beard and mustache, but in reality 
are not so. The cranial capacity is very small, generally not over 
1350 cubic centimeters, Mentally, as might be expected, they 
are of the very lowest caliber. They are unable to express or 
understand any ideas except the most simple. Indeed, their lan- 
guage is not capable of so doing. It has often been stated that 
€y have a belief in a good and an evil spirit, a future life, &c. 
I lived in constant intercourse with the Dieyerie tribe for a year, 
and can absolutely affirm that unless taught so by the whites 
with whom they came in contact, they have no such beliefs, and, 
Moreover, are totally incapable of forming any such ideas; nor 
© they Possess any moral sense whatever. The tribes on the 
Murray river and elsewhere on the continent are of a superior 
- Stade, and very likely have such ideas, but these certainly do not. 
7 are exceedingly timid in many respects, especially of the 
