that the native word for them is really something different.
Their purpose is to make the food-animals and food-plants multiply
and prosper. Each animal or plant is attended to by the group that
has it for a totem. (Totemism amongst this very remarkable people has
nothing to do either with exogamy or with lineage; but that is a subject
into which it is impossible to go here.) The rites vary considerably
from totem to totem, but a typical case or two may be cited.

The witchetty-grub men, for instance, want the grubs to multiply, that
there may be plenty for their fellows to eat. So they wend their way
along a certain path which tradition declares to have been traversed
by the great leader of the witchetty-grubs of the days of long ago.
(These were grubs transformed into men, who became by reincarnation
ancestors of the present totemites.) The path brings them to a place
in the hills where there is a big stone surrounded by many small stones.
The big stone is the adult animal, the little stones are its eggs.
So first they tap the big stone, chanting an invitation to it to lay
eggs. Then the master of the ceremonies rubs the stomach of each
totemite with the little stones, and says, "You have eaten much food."

Or, again, the Kangaroo men repair to a place called Undiara. It is
a picturesque spot. By the side of a water-hole that is sheltered by
a tall gum-tree rises a curiously gnarled and weather-beaten face of
quartzite rock. About twenty feet from the base a ledge juts out. When
the totemites hold their ceremony, they repair to this ledge. For here
in the days of long ago the ancestors who are now reincarnated in them
cooked and ate kangaroo food; and here, moreover, the kangaroo animals
of that time deposited their spirit-parts. First the face of the rock
below the ledge is decorated with long stripes of red ochre and white
gypsum, to represent the red fur and white bones of the kangaroo. It
is, in fact, one of those rock-paintings such as the palaeolithic men
of Europe made in their caves. Then a number of men, say, seven or
eight, mount upon the ledge, and, whilst the rest sing solemn chants
about the prospective increase of the kangaroos, these men open veins
in their arms, so that the blood flows down freely upon the ceremonial
stone. This is the first part of the rite. The second part is no less
interesting. After the blood-letting, they hunt until they kill a
kangaroo. Thereupon the old men of the totem eat a