Beatty—The St. George i, or Mummers’, Plays. 307 
with his tribe. In some of the ceremonies of this region the 
women engage in a mimic contest. 1 In yet another Australian 
ceremony the faces of the hoys are covered up. In this cere¬ 
mony the novitiates must fight their seniors. 2 
Another, and an earlier, observer describes! the sham hunts 
and fights at some initiation ceremonies 3 in Australia. 
In Africa the ceremony of initiation is carried out in al¬ 
most the same manner and with the same intention as in the 
case of the Australians. “The boys always take a new name, 
and are supposed by the initiation process to become new be¬ 
ings in the magic wood, and on their return to their village at 
the end of their course, they pretend to have entirely forgotten 
their life before they entered the wood; but this pretence is 
not kept up beyond the period of festivities given to welcome 
Tribe,” vol. 14, pp. 301-325. The legend and some of the mimetic rep¬ 
resentations are given, for example, the “opossum game,” which is 
the dramatic presentation of an opossum hunt. The realism is ex¬ 
treme, the tree being represented by a log stood upon end, and the 
“opossums” climbed up the tree exactly as the real animals do. This 
is true of nearly all these mimetic plays. They outdo the demands of 
Bottom and his fellow mechanicals. 
A. L. P. Cameron, “Notes on Some Tribes of New South Wales,” vol. 
14, pp. 344-370. The dramatic representation is brought out very 
clearly, but the legends are not connected with the ceremonies he de¬ 
scribes. Legends are given on pp. 368-370. These are partly etiolog¬ 
ical, one giving the origin of fire. 
Sir H. H. Johnston, “Initiation Rites on the Congo,” vol. 13, pp. 472 
ft. See also Proceedings of Royal Geog. Soo., N. S., vol. 5, p. 572 ff., 
1883. R. H. Mathews, “The Keepaara Ceremony of Initiation,” vol. 26, 
pp. 320-340. Godfrey Dale, “Customs and Habits of the Natives In¬ 
habiting the Bondei Country,” vol. 25, p. 189. In this article the dra¬ 
matic nature of the ceremony is brought out very clearly. It would 
hardly be suspected that a tribe of the hill country of India could bor¬ 
row customs from the Australians, and yet they are very much alike. 
The example is therefore of unimpeachable value. 
1 W. E. Roth “Ethnological Studies in the Northwest Central Ab¬ 
origines,” p. 170. 
2 John Matthew, “Eaglehawk and Crow,” 1899, pp. 118-119. 
3 G. Hodgkinson, “Australia from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay,” 
1845, pp. 230-235. 
