61 
1906-7.] Notes on Aboriginals of South Australia. 
are they of the correctness of their method and the truth of their results 
that they do not hesitate to lay down the law regarding what careful 
observers ought to see. Artists, who follow the established yet ever re- 
tested representations of the human body as it appears at rest or in action, 
are taken to task for representing the unnatural and impossible, and are 
excused by those writers only on the ground that they have formed bad 
ideals and employed bad models. I confess I have more faith in the results 
of a few thousand years of careful observation by artists of what is than in 
any deduction of what ought to he .” 
On my recent journeyings amongst the Filipinos, my attention was 
directed to the dexterity of some of the native races with their feet. After- 
wards when examining the blacks in the Northern Territory I was struck 
with the great width of the fore part of the foot in many natives, the 
looseness of the great toe, and the power of grasping which was exhibited. 
Most natives are as ready with a foot as with a hand. A man or woman 
when talking will drop a pipe ; immediately the toes close on it, and with 
a quick movement it is passed up behind the other leg into the hand which 
is hanging down at the outside of the opposite thigh. 
No more complete refutation of Ellis’s views could well be afforded than 
by this condition of the Northern Territory blackfellow’s foot, which shows 
only a difference in degree in a structure that is present, and of action that 
is possible, in the foot of the white subject. 
Since my return, and since lecturing on the subject to the Field 
Naturalists’ Society at the University here, I see a report that Professor 
Klaatsch has been studying in detail what he regards as an extreme 
instance in an aboriginal among the prisoners from Port Keats in the gaol 
at Port Darwin whom I had examined and photographed. 
Too much stress must not be laid on the occurrence of a single case of 
this sort when discussing the affinities of the Hominidse ; but should large 
numbers or whole tribes be found similarly constituted, then the case is 
different. 
WAITING. 
In the Palmerston Hospital during my visit there was a black boy, 
named Spider, suffering from “ulcerating granuloma pudendi.” One day 
the nurse found him carving a small piece of wood, and asked him what he 
was doing. He said he was writing a letter to send to his father. She 
asked what he had said, and he replied that he had written that he was 
sorry to say he was no better. She told him she thought he was somewhat 
better ; so he took another stick and began to carve a message that “ Missie ” 
