116 T. P. ANDERSON STUART. 
In a paper which was for the immediate purpose of describing 
certain stone implements or knives used by the blacks of the 
Mulligan River in performing the operation, R. Etheridge, Jun., 
in 1890, gave an account of what had up till that time been 
written on the subject of this curious and interesting custom,’ 
because as he said, “there still (1890) seems to be much scepticism 
and ignorance on the subject.” I shall, therefore, but briefly 
refer to the operation before describing the photographs of the 
actual condition which it is the main purpose of this note to record 
and publish. 
In 1879, Dr. Milne Robertson, Surgeon of the Convict Estab- 
lishment in Western Australia, sent a photograph of the organs 
of an aboriginal, who had had the operation performed, to the 
Exhibition in Sydney, but this photograph is believed to have 
perished in the fire which destroyed the entire building and its 
contents. Recently Sir John Forrest, the Premier of Western 
Australia, at my request, caused a search to be made for the 
negative or a print from it, but failed to find either, and as, so 
far as I can ascertain, no photograph or drawing of the condition 
had ever been published I venture to publish two which were 
_ taken under my own superintendence. 
Dr. Milne Robertson? describes the slitting of the urethra to be 
from the meatus to the middle of the organ only, in the case of 
the De Grey River blacks, while in the case of those living on the 
north side of the Murchison, the cleft extends from the meatus to 
the scrotum. The latter condition is identical with that of the 
subject of my photographs. In other cases, as in that of the blacks 
of the Gawler Range, the operation is a mere perforation of the 
lower wall of the urethra ‘at the base of the scrotum,” that is 
anterior to the scrotum, in the penial portion, as is expressly 
1 Notes on Australian Aboftiginal Stone Weapons and Implements.— 
Proc. Linn. Soc. of N.S.W., 1890 
2 Report upon certain pitilias Habits and Customs of the aie 
of Western Australia, Perth, 1879. 
3 Le Souéf—see Smyth’s Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, Vol. II., p- 205- 
