ernally presses his hand
against his side. Were this a Christian doctrine, the Euahlayi would be
said to have borrowed it, but few will accuse them of plagiarising from
Beckford. These myths, like all myths, are not consistent. Baiame may
change a soul into a bird.

We may ask whether, with their limited belief in reincarnation, and
with their haunted Minggah trees and rocks, the Euahlayi have set up a
creed which might possibly develop into the northern faith, or whether
they once held the northern faith, and have almost emerged from it.
Without further information about intermediate tribes and their ideas
on these matters, the question cannot be answered. We are also without
data as to whether the nearly extinct southern coastal tribes evolved
the All Father belief, and transmitted it to the Euahlayi, to some
Queensland tribe, with their Mulkari, and even to the Kaitish, or
whether the faith has been independently developed among the tribes
with no matrimonial classes and the others. Conjecture is at present
useless.

In one respect a discovery of Mrs. Parker's is unfavourable to my
theories. In THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM have shown that, when the names of
the phratry divisions of the tribes can be interpreted, they prove to
be names of animals, and I have shown how this may have come to be the
case. But among the Euahlayi the phratry names mean 'light blood' and
'dark blood.' This, PRIMA FACIE, seems to favour the theory of the Rev.
Mr. Mathews, in his EAGLE HAWK AND CROW, that two peoples, lighter and
darker, after an age of war, made CONNUBIUM and marriage treaty, whence
came the phratries. The same author might urge, if he pleased, that
Eagle Hawk (about the colour of the peregrine) was chosen to represent
'light,' and Crow to represent 'dark'; while the phratry animals, White
and Black Cockatoo, were selected, elsewhere, to represent the same
contrast. But we need more information as to the meanings of other
phratry names which have defied translation.

In many other things, as in the account of the YUNBEAI of the Euahlayi,
their mode of removing the tabu on the totem in food, their magic,
their 'multiplex totems,' their methods of hunting, their initiatory
ceremonies, their highly moral lullabies, and the whole of their kindly
life, Mrs. Parker's book appears to deserve a welcome from the few who
care to study the ways of early men, 'the pit whence we were dug.' The
Euahlayi are a sympathetic people, and have fo