Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/19

Rh on broad lines the range of the great groups of tribes organised successively from the two-class system of Central Australia, and the more developed four- and eight-class system of the more northern parts of the continent, to the highly-modified organisations of the coastal regions of South-East Australia.

I have more than once drawn attention to the almost complete identity, even in details, of certain tribal customs in places far distant from each other. I now mention this in advance, for the purpose of pointing out that in such cases I have endeavoured to give the expressions made use of by my native informants, or my correspondents, as the case may be, and have given them in detail, in order to impress the coincidence, since it shows a remarkable and widely-spread observance of custom.

By far the greater part of the materials for this work was collected and recorded before 1889. Since then the native tribes have more or less died, and in the older settlements of South-East Australia the tribal remnants have now almost lost the knowledge of the beliefs and customs of their fathers. I have preferred to let my notes remain, as they were written, in the present tense, rather than to attempt to bring them up to the present time.

Among the causes to which the rapid extinction of the native tribes by acquired vices must be attributed, I may note the use of opium in Queensland. My correspondents inform me that it was acquired from the Chinese employed there, and that it is given to the aborigines as wages and gratuities, or is sold to them by retail traders.

Dr. Lorimer Fison and I have been so long associated in investigations into the organisation and customs of the native tribes of Australia, that it was with feelings of the greatest regret that I found his other engagements would prevent him from joining me in this work. It had been