dance, or corrobboree that ensue; the wild animals on the ground being all considered the property of the owner of the land."[1]
Mr. Gideon Lang asserts that the natives have also individual property in various trees. On one occasion, when exploring, and suffering severely from the want of food, and particularly the craving from the want of vegetables, his black guide pointed to a bee passing over them, loaded, and evidently in straight flight for the hive. Mr. Lang told the native to follow it, and he did so; but when they reached the tree, the black had scarcely got off his horse when he remounted, as if to go on again. Mr. Lang asked the reason for his action, when he pointed to a mark on the tree, evidently made by a stone tomahawk, and said that it belonged to "N'other one blackfellow," and that he could not touch it—and at this time he was almost on the point of starvation, as well as the others of the party.[2]
Reference is made in the same place to the statement of Sir George Grey, that if two or more men have a right to hunt over the same portion of ground, and one of them breaks off the tops of certain trees, by their laws the grubs in these trees are his property, and no one has a right to touch the tree; but Sir George here refers to the grass-trees, which, unless the top is broken or it naturally decays, is not a proper receptacle for the grubs which supply the natives with food. The man who took the trouble to break the tops of the grass-trees was surely entitled to gather the grubs; but he acquired no right to the trees, and they could not, by his simply breaking the tops, become his property, as a huge gum-tree might, or a parcel of land.[3]
The natives of the Darling had a mode of asserting their rights to the land they inhabited which seemed to surprise Major Mitchell. The "Spitting Tribe" caused the explorers to pour out the water from their buckets into a hole which they dug in the ground; and when a river chief had a tomahawk presented to him, he pointed to the stream, and signified that the white men were at liberty to take water from it.[4]
This, however, was no more than the assertion by the principal man of tribal rights, and did not indicate any individual property in the waters or soil.
Eyre affirms that every male has a piece of land which he can call his own, that he knows its boundaries and can point them out; that the father divides his lands amongst his sons, and that there is almost hereditary succession; that a female never inherits, and that primogeniture has no peculiar rights or advantages;[5] and Grey adds that, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, a boy can point out the portion of land which he eventually is to inherit, and that if the male children of a family become extinct, the male children of the daughters inherit their grandfather's land.
Lieut.-Col. Collins says, "Their spears and shields, their clubs and lines, &c., are their own property; they are manufactured by themselves, and are the whole
