it had first
belonged. Should a member of any other use it without permission, a
fight would ensue. Some of these stones are said to have spirits in
them; those are self-moving, and at times have the power of speech. I
have neither seen them move nor heard them speak, though I have a
couple in my possession. I suppose the statement must be taken on
faith; and as faith can move mountains, why not a dayoorl-stone?

The so-called improvident blacks actually used to have a harvest time,
and a harvest home too. When the doonburr, or seed, was thick on the
yarmmara, or barley-grass, the tribes gathered this grass in
quantities.

First, they made a little space clear of everything, round which they
made a brush-yard. Each fresh supply of yarmmara, as it was brought in
by the harvesters, was put in this yard. When enough was gathered, the
brush-yard was thrown on one side, and fire set to the grass, which was
in full ear though yet green. While the fire was burning, the blacks
kept turning the grass with sticks all the time to knock the seeds out.
When this was done, and the fire burnt out, they gathered up the seed
into a big opossum-skin rug, and carried it to the camp.

There, the next day, they made a round hole like a bucket, and a square
hole close to it. These they filled with grass seed. One man trampled
on the seed in the square hole to thresh it out with his feet; another
man had a boonal, or stick, about a yard long, rounded at one end, and
nearly a foot broad; with this he worked the grass in the round hole,
and as he worked the husks flew away.

It took all one day to do this. The next day they took the large bark
wirrees, canoe-shaped vessels, which when big like these are called
yubbil. They put some grain in these, and shook it up; one end of the
yubbils being held much higher than the other, thus all the dust and
dirt sifted to one end, whence it was blown off. When the grain was
sufficiently clean, it was put away in skin bags to be used as
required, being then ground on the large flat dayoorl-stones, with a
smaller flat stone held in both hands by the one grinding; this stone
was rubbed up and down the dayoorl, grinding the seed on it, on which,
from time to time, water was thrown to soften it.

When ground, the grain was made into little flat cakes, and cooked as
the tree-seed cakes were. When the harvesting of the yarmmara was done,
a great hunt took place, a big feast was prepared, and a big corrobore