32 
HORN EXPEDITION—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
rings worn by the women, decoration of the hair is confined to the men, and it 
is the men who most elaborately adorn themselves with patterns of coloured 
pigments or with plumes of feathers or other body ornaments. 
So far I have alluded to the scarring of the body, the piercing of the 
septum and the knocking out of teeth. There is perhaps more difficulty in 
accepting Westermarck’s conclusion that circumcision and the other phallic 
mutiliation should also be regarded in the same light as serving originally a 
decorative purpose. So far as the former is concerned I am inclined to agree with 
him to the extent that this is a less unsatisfactory explanation than that it either 
partakes of the nature of a religious ceremony or was intended to promote clean¬ 
liness or to guard against disease; or than, as Mr. Herbert Spencer* has advocated, 
that circumcision in common with other mutilations, once the marks of subjection 
or of trophies taken from vanquished enemies, has developed into the idea of a 
propitiatory offering by man to superior or supernatural powers. 
The objection to these views have been very fully set forth by the learned 
writer! to whom I have so frequently, and to my advantage, referred, but the 
subject is too long to be discus.sed here. There is however one important 
circumstance which must be kept in mind in dealing with the practices of the 
Australians; their homogenous physical characters, the general similarity of their 
habits, customs, handicrafts and mental attributes—all suggesting a common origin 
for the whole race—make the fact that these, and to them highly important, 
practices are not universal amongst them a matter of great significance. In some 
tribes circumcision alone is practiced, in some subincision, in others the two in 
conjunction, and differences in these respects may be found in two contiguous and 
otherwise vei’y similar tribes. On the supposition that these practices were once 
common to a primitive single Australian race any theory which is to account 
satisfactorily for their origin should be capable of being extended so as to account 
for the divergencies that have since arisen. Or, if on the other hand, we suppose 
them to be of later endemic origin the difficulty of the same nature still remains 
of comprehending how practices, of such high importance, should have arisen in 
some tribes and not in others. Whether any of the theories that have been 
advanced in explanation of their origin can be so extended I must leave to the 
consideration of those with a wider knowledge of anthropology than I possess, 
but one may at least observe that, so far, no satisfactory solution of either difficulty 
has been offered. 
* Ceremonial Institutions. 
f Westermarek, op. cit. 
