Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/290

264 been devised by a process of natural selection to regulate the proper distribution of the total quantity of food available. Thus the husband, according to his paedo-matronym, lives on articles of diet different from those of his wife (or wives), both of whom again are different from those permissible to their resulting offspring, which belong to a third paedo-matronymic group. Hence, to put it shortly, whereas in a European community with a common dietary the more children there are to feed the less will become the share for the parents, in this North-West-Central Queensland aboriginal system the appearance of children will make no appreciable difference in minimising the quantity of food available for those that give them birth. Any scarcity in the total quantity of all the food is met by a change of camping ground. A further circumstance that appears to lend great plausibility to this view is that, although practically identical terms and rules are followed throughout North-West-Central Queensland, the different animals, birds, fish, &c., 'tabooed' by each paedo-matronymic group vary with each ethnographical district."

Thus the practical outcome of the taboo among these natives is to protect the wife and child against the greediness of the father; and even if the father were too lazy to hunt for them game that he could not himself eat, still the game would be left for them to pursue. It would be quite in accordance with the often rather roundabout devices of nature to secure the continuance of the species that the actual origin of the taboo should be, partly at least, the felt necessity of providing for a free supply of food. But it is at the same time an explanation of the taboo which must be considered in connection with the taboo and totem system, as this reveals itself in other races of equally low civilisation with the Queensland aborigines.

Since 1894, Mr. Roth has been surgeon to the Boulia, Cloncurry, and Normanton Hospitals, and has during that period conducted his inquiries into the language, customs, and habits of the natives of North-West-Central Queensland. Let us hope that he will have an opportunity of doing a similar bit of work for some other large district. The book is dedicated to Sir Horace Tozer, Acting Premier of Queensland, and is published by the Colonial Government. It is in the highest degree creditable to all concerned.

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