It may at once be said that it is of very great interest. The natives described are different in many ways from those of the Central Districts described in the two previous volumes. They inhabit Melville Island and Bathurst Island and the adjacent districts on the mainland of the extreme north of the continent. But different as they may be from the inhabitants of the great central plateau, they belong to the same race and practise customs of the same general character. Professor Spencer gives good reasons for believing that, in spite of the annual visits of Malays for years past in search of trepang and tortoiseshell, they are practically pure from foreign blood. Nor does there seem any reason to hold that they have been touched by foreign customs or traditions; though some of the material fabrics they use, which are of course much easier to transmit and acquire, may be of foreign origin. The differences, therefore, of the customs and institutions on the coast from those of the inner area are simply variations within the general circuit of customs and institutions which we recognise as characteristic of the Australian race. They may be compared to the indigenous eucalyptus trees, which cover the soil wherever it is capable of bearing a tree. There are said, I know not with what exactitude, to be two hundred and forty different kinds of eucalyptus, all presumably developed within the continent. This variety in monotony corresponds to that of the native traditions, using that word in its widest sense.
We are familiar, for example, through Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's two former books, with the rigour and cruelty of the puberty ceremonies. The youth of the extreme north are also required to undergo rites of initiation. But there these rites are mild: they do not include any sort of mutilation—not even the knocking out of a tooth; though they do in fact erect a stringent barrier between childhood and adult life, as elsewhere. Now it seems clear, so far as the distribution of this mild type of rites has been ascertained and reported by Professor Spencer, that the more cruel form of the rites has spread from the centre of the continent, and for some reason has not succeeded in establishing itself among the most northerly tribes; it has not been once prevalent there and been dropped. What is, moreover, highly significant is that male descent seems only to be found among the tribes which
