have
taken place. But against this must be set the fact that in this area
also we find two cockatoos, and on the Annan River two bees, arrayed
against one another; unless it can be shown that these two birds are
also proverbial foes, or that the Australian native had reached a point
in his biological investigations at which he recognised that the
presence of two closely allied species in a district involves a
particularly keen struggle for existence (which they would, however,
regard in such an advanced stage of knowledge as appropriate to the
designation of intra-racial rather than inter-racial feuds), the two
sets of facts balance one another, and leave us still engaged in a vain
quest for a conclusion.

Putting theories as to racial conflicts aside, and dealing with the
facts as we find them, we seem to have a choice of two hypotheses.
Either the eaglehawk-crow myths were told before the phratry names came
into existence, or they were invented to explain the existence of the
phratry names. Let us assume that none of the unknown names mean
eaglehawk or crow, and that the eaglehawk-crow area has remained
approximately the same size, or has, at any rate, not diminished
(excluding, of course, those cases where it seems to have lost ground
owing to the disappearance of phratry names altogether, as among the
Kurnai); we must then, on the second theory, assume that the story of
the combat spread to tribes with completely different phratry names like
the Urabunna, and got mixed up with their ceremonies of initiation (the
most sacred part of the mythology of the Australian natives, and one not
likely to be much influenced by chance intruders); and that it came even
in some cases to be told of Baiame, the creator and institutor of the
rites of initiation, who is represented as himself taking part in the
conflict and gaining a victory over the foes of mankind[104]. On the
whole, therefore, this view of the case appears improbable.

To the theory that the Eaglehawk-Crow story was originally independent
of the phratry names no such objections apply. We are indefinitely
remote from the period at which the anthropologist will be able to do
for Australia what Franz Boas has done for the North-West of
America--draw up a table showing the resemblances and differences
between the stock of folktales of the different tribes, or, which is
more important for our present purpose, of the main divisions, eastern,
central, and western, whic