84 
HORN EXPEDITION—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
provide themselves sufficiently before going to sleep. A married couple sleep 
together with a single fire, or with one on each side in cold weather. Thus, in 
recently abandoned camps, by the relations of the hollows in the earth, which 
mark the portions of the bodies and of the fires it was not difficult to judge of 
the domestic status of their former occupants. 
Most frequently we found the blacks sleeping without clothing or covering of 
any kind; occasionally, however, a blanket was to be seen in their possession. 
One morning, at Crown Point, two adults, a boy about 15, a ‘•picaninny” and five 
dogs were observed, by a member of our party, emerging from beneath a single 
blanket under which they had all been huddling for the night. On other occa¬ 
sions, also, we observed the attempt to promote mutual warmth by close contact of 
the bodies. 
It is a very singular fact that, in an elevated region like that of the 
McDonnell Ranges, where the nights are always, and the days often, very cold for 
several months in the year, no attempt whatever is made to utilise, as clothing or 
covering, the really excellent fur of the Euro and Rock Wallaby, which are fairly 
abundant amongst the hills. Not only would these animals provide the pelts, but 
in the sinews of the tails, which they use for other purposes, they would have 
excellent sewing material. Rather than use the skins for such a purpose they 
prefer to cook the animals whole, and consider the hides amongst the edible 
portions. Mr. Gillen tells me that, in former times, the Arunta natives used to 
make bags for carrying water out of skins, but I have never seen an example from 
this locality, though we have them at the South Australian Museum from Western 
Australia. This neglect of natural products contrasts with the practice of various 
tribes in more southern portions of the country, where beautifully made opossum 
fur rugs used to be made in the days before the natives came to depend on the 
issue of Government blankets. 
Fire-Making. 
Though I did not see this performance in Central Australia, many of the soft- 
wooded shields of Erythrina wood bear charred grooves, which are evidently the 
result of efibrts to produce fire by the ploughing method of friction (Plate V., 
Fig. IRj). The hard-wood with which these grooves are made is, I believe, a 
piece of dry Mulga. In no case did I observe such marks as would be produced 
by the rotatory method, although I was informed that this also v/as used. The 
di’y, pithy llower stems of the grass tree {Xanlhorrhcea), which grows in a few 
