LANGUAGE. 
393 
singular, dual and plural. The nominative agent 
always precedes an active verb. When any new 
object is presented to the native, a name is given to 
it, from some fancied similarity to some object they 
already know, or from some peculiar quality or attri- 
bute it may possess ; thus, rice is in the Moorunde 
dialect called “ yeelilee” or “ maggots,” from an ima- 
gined resemblance between the two objects. 
The most singular and remarkable fact, connected 
with the coincidence of customs or dialect, amongst 
the Aborigines, is that it exists frequently to a less 
degree among tribes living close to one another, 
than between those who are more remotely sepa- 
rated. The reason of this apparent anomaly would 
seem to be, that those tribes now living near to one 
another, and among whom the greatest dissimilarity 
of language and customs is found to exist, have 
originally found their way to the same neighbour- 
hood by different lines of route, and consequently 
the greatest resemblances in language and custom, 
might naturally be expected to be met with, (as is 
in reality the case), not between tribes at present 
the nearest to each other, but between those, who 
although now so far removed, occupy respectively 
the opposite extremes of the lines of route by which 
one of them had in the first instance crossed over 
the continent. 
Without entering into an elaborate analysis, of 
either the structure or radical derivation of the 
various dialects we are acquainted with, I shall 
