HORN EXPEDITION-ANTIIKOPOLOIiV. 
5 
doHciences in the record are inevitable. So, also, there arise (luestions in which, 
in the absence of personal experience, reliance has to be })laced on the statements 
of others. I trust, from the infre({uency with which I have thought it necessary 
to cast doubt upon information so derived, that it may be assumed that it emanates 
from sources believed to be thoi'oughly reliable; tlie names, indeed, of several of 
my informants constitute the best guarantee for the kind of knowledge that comes 
from long personal experience of the natives and their ways. 
In this respect I am particularly fortunate in being able to supplement my own 
observations, just in those matters in which they are most deficient, by the notes of a 
most intelligent inquirer and accurate observer, Mr. F. J. Gillen, Sub-protector of 
Aborigines and Special Magistrate at Alice Springs in the McDonnell Ranges. 
This gentlemen, from his long acquaintance and sympathetic dealings with the 
natives, has had opportunities of witnessing ceremonies and gaining information 
concerning them that have fallen to the lot of few white men. Mr. Gillen’s 
paper with its interesting series of illustrations, from his own camera, forms a most 
valuable contribution to the ethnology of Central Australia; moreover, I have to 
express my gratitude to him for much valuable information and assistance in my 
own work and particularly for the genei'ous use he has permitted me to make of 
his photographic skill. To Professor Spencer I owe a similar acknowledgment 
for artistic and other services freely rendered. Indeed, I recognise that whatever 
value and interest may attach to this paper are greatly enhanced by the illustra¬ 
tions which accompany it. 
In several instances Mr. Gillen’s and my own account will be found to 
overlap, but as that gentleman has entrusted me with the editing of his paper 
I am anxious that it should appear as nearly as possible in its original form. As 
a set-ofl against such overlapping may be placed the advantage accruing from 
the confirmatory evidence of two independent reports. In most respects, however, 
Mr. Gillen and I deal with the subject from difierent points of view, and our 
papers are lai-gely supplementary of one another. Some discrepancies in native 
names that occur in the two reports arise either from the occurrence of actual 
variations in the same tribe or, more frequently perhaps, from the fact that while 
Mr. Gillen’s report lefers to one tribe only, my own deals with this as well as 
another, and it has not always been possible to discriminate between the two 
languages. 
In all essential particulars the natives of Central Australia conform to the well- 
known type of the Australian race. Those features, either of person or custom, 
which distinguish them in a subordinate degree from the tilbes nearer the coast 
