damental unity
of the whole is not only generally admitted, but--what is better--it has
been well illustrated. The researches of Captain Grey, Teichelmann,
Schurrmann, and others, have chiefly contributed to this.

The appreciation of certain apparent characteristic peculiarities has
been less satisfactory; differences having been over-rated and points of
similarity wondered at rather than investigated.

The well-known instrument called the _boomerang_ is Australian, and it
is, perhaps, exclusively so.

Circumcision is an Australian practice--a practice common to certain
Polynesians and Negroes, besides--to say nothing of the Jews and
Mahometans.

The recognition of the _maternal_ rather than the _paternal_ descent is
Australian. Children take the name of their mother. What other points it
has in common with the Malabar polyandria has yet to be ascertained.

When an Australian dies, those words which are identical with his name,
or (in case of compounds) with any part of it, cease to be used; and
some synonym is adopted instead; just as if, in England, whenever a Mr.
_Smith_ departed this life, the parish to which he belonged should cease
to talk of _blacksmiths_, and say _forgemen_, _forgers_, or something
equally respectful to the deceased, instead. This custom re-appears in
Polynesia, and in South America; Dobrizhoffer's account of the
Abiponian custom being as follows:--The "Abiponian language is involved
in new difficulties by a ridiculous custom which the savages have of
continually abolishing words common to the whole nation, and
substituting new ones in their stead. Funeral rites are the origin of
this custom. The Abipones do not like that anything should remain to
remind them of the dead. Hence appellative words bearing any affinity
with the names of the deceased are presently abolished. During the first
years that I spent amongst the Abipones, it was usual to say _Hegmalkam
kahamatek_, when will there be a slaughtering of oxen? On account of the
death of some Abipon, the word _Kahamatek_ was interdicted, and, in its
stead, they were all commanded by the voice of a crier to say,
_Hegmalkam negerkata?_ The word _nihirenak_, a tiger, was exchanged for
_apanigehak_; _peu_, a crocodile, for _Kaeprhak_, and _Kaama_,
Spaniards, for _Rikil_, because these words bore some resemblance to the
names of Abipones lately deceased. Hence it is that our vocabularies are
so full of blots occasioned by our having such frequ