42 
MEMOIR 
photographic and phonographic material gathered by him¬ 
self in the course of his wanderings. To fall back on my own 
impressions of the Museum, nothing was so amazing as the 
Spencer Hall, where his ethnological spoils are displayed in 
all their gorgeous variety; for no one who has not actually 
seen could imagine what a show can be afforded by the Stone 
Age, when not only the more or less enduring materials, the 
stone or the wood, are preserved, but, surviving all difficulties 
of transport, the more delicate decorations, made up of hair, 
fur, feathers, and earthy paint, stuck together with some kind 
of doubtful gum or it may be with human blood, are set forth 
as they veritably figured in some native ceremony unwit¬ 
nessed by any save the initiated—with Spencer among them. 
For some specimens are not easily obtained, as Spencer in¬ 
forms Balfour when making him a present for the Pitt-Rivers 
of various Australian objects, including a Nurtunja or sacred 
pole of the Arunta. 
‘When the Central Australian is civilized, he will doubtless make this 
for sale. Meanwhile the one sent is a genuine one, and it is a most 
difficult thing to secure, because it is made for the performance of 
a special ceremony, and is then under ordinary conditions taken to 
pieces; because the human hair which is wound round it belongs to 
certain individuals who are not at all anxious to part with it, and also 
the same Nurtunja is never used for the performance of more than 
one ceremony.’ 
Another letter to Balfour throws a sidelight on Spencer’s 
interest in his museum work. 
‘Your letter reached me when I was attempting to prepare a lecture 
that in a weak moment I consented to give on the Stone Age in 
Australia. As yet I have been collecting “recent” material together 
with, very rarely, older—but the latter is very difficult to find. How¬ 
ever, I am going to devote time to this as soon as possible. As to recent 
stuff, I have now, apart from uncounted rough flakes, &c., some 
16,000 specimens. I think that amongst them I have Chellean, 
Mousterian, Acheulean, and of course Neolithic forms, and all of 
