Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/405

Rh tribes, and he asked me whether I was aware that the Australian aborigines do not believe children to be the fruit of the intercourse of the sexes. His Lordship informed me that this incredulity is not limited to the Arunta, but is shared by all the North Queensland tribes with which he is acquainted, and he added that it forms a fact which has to be reckoned with in the introduction of a higher standard of sexual morality among the aborigines, for they do not naturally accept the true explanation of conception and childbirth even after their admission into mission stations. The Bishop also referred to a form of communal or group marriage which he believes to be practised among aboriginal tribes he has visited on the western side of the Gulf of Carpentaria; but unfortunately I had not time to obtain particulars from him on this subject. I pointed out to his Lordship the high scientific importance of the information which he had volunteered to me, and I requested that he would publish it in his own name. He assented, but as some time has passed without his finding leisure to draw up a full account, he has kindly authorized me to publish this brief statement, which has been submitted to him and approved by him as correct. I need not indicate to anthropologists the great interest and value of the Bishop's testimony as independently confirming and extending the observations of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen on the tribes of Central Australia. In the interest of science it is much to be desired that the Bishop or those of his clergy who know the natives would publish fuller information on these topics.

In authorizing me to publish the foregoing statement the Bishop of North Queensland wrote me a letter (dated Bishop's Lodge, Townsville, Queensland, July 9th, 1909) in which he gives some interesting additional information and makes certain valuable observations, the fruit of his personal experience, which deserve to be laid to heart by anthropologists, especially by such as have no first-hand knowledge of the Australian aborigines. As he has kindly allowed me to make what use I please of his letter, I shall avail myself of his permission to quote some passages from it. He writes,—"The result of thirteen years' observation has led me to conclude that, while anthropologists may be right in placing the social organization of the blacks at one end of the ladder of