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294 The colors used by the natives in painting the caves which were visited by Capt. Grey were white, black, red, yellow, and blue. Blue is rarely used by the Aborigines, and in some districts it was unknown prior to the colonization of Australia by the whites. This color was perhaps obtained by mixing black and white.

In ornamenting their rugs they copied from nature. One man told Mr. Bulmer that he got his ideas from the observation of natural objects. He had copied the markings on a piece of wood made by the grub known as Krang; and from the scales of snakes and the markings of lizards he derived new forms. The natives never, in adorning their rugs or weapons, as far as Mr. Bulmer knows, imitate the forms of plants or trees.

A red pigment was obtained by the natives, either from decomposed rocks, where it is found as clay, or by burning some trap-rock or porphyry. Yellow clays and yellow-ochre are not plentiful, and in some districts the pigment is not found at all. White is got in the areas occupied by granite and Palæozoic rocks almost everywhere; but in the large tracts occupied by Tertiary rocks, where white clays are not found near the surface, the natives collected gypsum and selenite, burnt the mineral, and produced a very good pigment. A black color was made from charcoal or from soot. The charcoal or soot was mixed with fat and used as a paint.

The color most commonly used during periods of mourning was white, but, as already stated, both white and red are used by different tribes. Amongst the natives living within the water-shed of the Murray, white alone, Mr. Bulmer thinks, is used. On the eastern side of the Cordillera, however, he has seen the bodies painted with a mixture of red-ochre and fat. The natives take the fat of the deceased, mix it with ochre, and smear their bodies. Both white and red are commonly applied at other times, for purposes of decoration.