of both colours about the carving with
which they are also ornamented.*

(*Footnote. "A German pays no attention to the ornament of his person;
his shield is the object of his care; and this he decorates with the
liveliest colours." Tacitus de Mor. Germ. c.6.)

RAISED SCARS ON ARMS AND BREAST.

The "large punctures or ridges raised on different parts of their bodies,
some in straight and others in curved lines" distinguish the Australian
natives wherever they have been yet seen and, in describing these raised
scars, I have quoted the words of Captain Cook as the most descriptive
although having reference to the natives of Adventure Bay, in one of the
most southern isles of Van Diemen's Land, when first seen in 1777.

CUTTING THEMSELVES IN MOURNING.

It is also customary for both men and women to cut themselves in mourning
for relations. I have seen old women in particular bleeding about the
temples from such self-inflicted wounds.*

(*Footnote. "We often read of people cutting themselves, in Holy Writ,
when in great anguish; but we are not commonly told what part they
wounded. The modern Arabs, it seems, gash their arms which with them are
often bare: it appears from a passage of Jeremiah that the ancients
wounded themselves in the same part, 'Every head shall be bald, and every
beard clipt; upon all hands shall be cuttings and upon the loins
sackcloth.' Chapter 48:37." Harmer volume 4 page 436.)

AUTHORITY OF OLD MEN.

Respect for age is universal among the aborigines. Old men, and even old
women, exercise great authority among assembled tribes and "rule the big
war" with their voices when both spears and boomerangs are ready to be
thrown.* Young men are admitted into the order of the seniors according
to certain rites which their coradjes, or priests, have the sagacity to
keep secret and render mysterious.

(*Footnote. Leviticus 19:32. "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head,
and honour the face of the old man." The Lacedemonians had a law that
aged persons should be reverenced like fathers. See also Homer Iliad
15:204 et 23:788. Odyss. 13:141.)

LAW AGAINST EATING EMU FLESH.

No young men are allowed to eat the flesh or eggs of the emu, a kind of
luxury which is thus reserved exclusively for the old men and the women.
I understood from Piper, who abstained from eating emu when food was very
scarce, that the ceremony necessary in this case consisted chiefly in
being rubbed all over with emu fat by an o