fferentiated, as the
languages changed; we have in fact direct evidence of a tendency to
preserve the old names, which we may perhaps regard as the sacred names,
after the bird has been rebaptised in the terminology of daily life.
Over and above this we have of course the fact that the sacred language
has, generally speaking, both in Australia and elsewhere, this
unchanging character. But this simple name-borrowing theory, it is
clear, is equally valid as an explanation of the facts.

Although we cannot determine the meaning of the names the quadripartite
division of the Mallera-Wuthera[105] and allied phratries in the north is
evidence of a similar tendency. It is by no means impossible that
Mallera, Yungaroo, and Pakoota all mean the same thing. (This ignorance
of the meaning of the phratry and class names is _prima facie_ evidence
of their high antiquity.) In the newly-discovered phratry names of the
eight-class tribes we have yet another instance of tripartite division.
If we may assume that Illitchi, Uluuru, and Wiliuku are from the same
root (which, as we have seen, is probably _welu_, the terminations
_-uku_, _-itchi_, and _-uru_ (=_-aree_) being formative suffixes), we
have here too a single phratry name on the one side and three sister
names on the other. While it is clear that the names cannot be in any
sense of the term recent, from the fact that linguistic differentiation
had already gone some distance in what we may call, for want of a better
term, groups speaking a stock language (in proof of which we have only
to look at the formative suffixes), it seems equally clear that the
present phratry names must be considerably later than the final
settlement of the country. At the same time it must not be forgotten
that the existence of numerous small phratries, the number of which may
yet be largely increased by more exact research, is _prima facie_ a
proof that the groups which adopted them had not reached the stage at
which anything like that tribal (still less national) organisation was
known, which is at the present day characteristic of the Arunta, and,
perhaps, we may say, of all groups organised on a class system with
class names known and used over an area far beyond that over which the
(in a restricted sense) tribal language extends.

The recurrence of crow in the phratry name of the far west lends further
support to the view that the phratry names were selected in some way,
and were not due to some ac