lastly by their own perishable nature in the long run. Consequently none of those now extant can be described as ancient: the great majority of them in fact have been made since the coming of the white man, as is conclusively proved by the evidence they bear of being executed with iron tools, though some were done with stone adzes. The taphoglyphs consist of more or less geometrical figures carved either in the bark or, after removal of the bark, on a portion of the surface of the tree, in the exposed sapwood. Rhomboids, chevrons, herring-bones, spirals, serpentine and other shapes are illustrated. The teleteglyphs tend to be more elaborate, even where only such figures are executed; but they often include outlines of animals, and sometimes even very rough outlines of the human form.
Mr. Etheridge has been at much pains to make his work complete by enumerating and where possible describing as well as illustrating every known example. And he has sought the meaning of the figures and the exact intention of the carvers, unfortunately with very little result. Scarcely any information could be obtained from the natives. They specified freely enough, when they knew it, the name of the person buried beside the taphoglyphs; but the meaning of the carved figures they either could not or would not tell. Little could be gleaned from a comparison of the dendroglyphs either with one another, or with the designs on wooden implements or weapons or on the skins used for clothing. The symbolism therefore remains unknown.
The teleteglyphs are slightly, and only slightly, more explicable. The author comes to the conclusion about them that “the zoomorphous designs are in all probability totemic; but amongst the quasi-geometrical figures it is not easy to distinguish between totemic and non-totemic glyphs. If the former are admitted to be of a totemic nature, then it follows that certain specific animals were totems in more than one, and possibly in several tribes, or sub-tribes, of a nation.” This is of course probable. It seems moreover that some of the designs were specially intended to represent the food forbidden to young men after initiation. Some of the anthropomorphic designs were stated to represent Daramulun or Baiame, both
