570 Notices of Books ♦ [August, 
and Mr. P. Beveridge — that “ new-born babes are killed by their 
parents and eaten by them and the (older) children,” and that 
“ meals are too often made by mothers of their own offspring;” 
after adding that this custom is not a rite, not a sacrifice, he yet 
feels free to remark that “ every newspaper one reads gives 
accounts of cases of infanticide, as practised by our own people, 
far more horrible than any known to the Australians.” 
Elsewhere we read that the Australian native has not, like 
ourselves, had the advantages of thousands of years of civilisa- 
tion ; “ he is as he was created !” Whether this diCtum agrees 
worse with the evolutionist or with the specialist view of man’s 
origin it is difficult to say. If we read the author’s description 
of the horrible initiatory rites undergone by Australian boys 
before they are admitted to rank as men — rites consisting of five 
successive mutilations, in the last one of which the back, from 
the shoulders to the hips, is deeply furrowed with sharp flint- 
stones ; if we further study the account here given of their com- 
plicated and oppressive marriage customs, their avoidance of 
different kinds of food, — not as unwholesome or contaminating, 
but merely as restricted to some one sex or some particular time 
of life, — we shall certainly be forced to conclude that the native 
is assuredly not “ as he was created,” but has either retrograded 
or “ progressed ” in a very undesirable manner. Indeed it is 
difficult, on Mr. Smyth’s own showing, to avoid the conclusion 
that the life of an ape is more wholesome and less irrational 
than that of a “ black fellow.” 
The exceedingly involved and complicated nature of Abori- 
ginal customs is, however, a most interesting facft. It reminds 
us of the parallel circumstance that in a state of barbarism, or 
at the first dawn of civilisation, mankind have generally spoken 
highly complicated languages distinguished by manifold inflec- 
tions, and have gradually, as they advanced to a higher culture, 
tended to a greater simplicity in speech. Do we here recognise 
a phenomenon of a periodic nature ? Or are the savages whom 
we now meet with not in their upward course from the primitive 
condition of man, or of the anthropoids, but engaged in a career 
of degradation, such as we unquestionably meet with in various 
parts of the animal kingdom ? From whichever point we regard 
it the question is beset with difficulties. 
A most useful lesson which may be drawn from the work 
before us is, that the life of a savage is not, as the ignorant 
imagine, a career of freedom. What with the council of old 
men, the dreamers and conjurors, and the inviolable customs 
and superstitions of his race, the individual black fellow is at 
every step restricted and interfered with. The most searching 
civilised tyranny — with the redoubtable Mrs. Grundy as a make- 
weight — is, in comparison, liberty. There is another conclusion 
which we cannot refrain from drawing : superstition is often 
represented as the outcome of religion. Yet of the Aborigines, 
