Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/195

Rh for work was extraordinary; much of his reading was done in the saddle. The botanical and geological observations which he made on these journeys bore fruit in a series of memoirs which he contributed to the publications of his official Department, the Royal Society of Victoria, the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, and occasionally to the Quarterly Journal of Geological Science. Among these memoirs may be particularly mentioned his treatise, "The Eucalypti of Gippsland," which appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria for 1889.

Still more important for his life-work was the acquaintance which on these journeys he made with the native inhabitants, the Kurnai of Gippsland. He gained their confidence, and, being regarded by them as a fully initiated member of the tribe, was able to acquire an intimate knowledge of their old customs and beliefs before they had wholly passed into oblivion; for, though the Kurnai had long been at peace with the whites, they were even then fast dying out. Thus, when on his return from Fiji in 1871 Mr. Fison appealed through the newspapers for information on the Australian aborigines, Mr. Howitt was well qualified by his knowledge both of the Central and of the South-eastern tribes, the Dieri as well as the Kurnai, to respond to the appeal. He did so, and, as we have seen, the two men became fast friends and colleagues in the work of investigation, laying together the foundations of Australian ethnology. In these researches the observation and collection of facts fell mainly to the share of Mr. Howitt, his colleague's professional duties and situation leaving him fewer opportunities of personal contact with the natives. On the other hand, the theoretical interpretation of the facts was at first largely the work of Mr. Fison, though in later years Mr. Howitt distinguished himself certainly not less in this department of anthropology. After the two friends had published in Kamilaroi