Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/129

124 perceived when dimmed and diminished, by reason of the intervention of a hazy or murky atmosphere, the fate of the unborn will be a fitful one; therefore the prospective mothers are elated or depressed accordingly.

They do not possess any ceremony or incantations wherewith to propitiate this birth-governing worka worka, even although they deem his influence all-powerful in the making or marring the fortunes of the unborn.

The aborigines divide the year as Europeans do, viz., into four seasons.

Bakroothakootoo (spring) is defined by the advent of succulent herbage, upon which the Ngarrow (Bustard) loves to graze, by the pairing of birds and consequent egg harvest, and by the emergence of the young kangaroo from forth the parent pouch.

Kurtie (summer) is distinguished by a general display of flowers and by their gradually changing into seed vessels and fruit, and by the brown tints assumed by the ripening grasses, together with the flight of all fledgelings from their parents' nests, and the abandonment for good of the maternal pouch by the young kangaroo.

Weat (autumn) is known by the cottony gossamar [sic] substance which floots [sic] about in the atmosphere during that season in this colony, by the hybernating of snakes and other reptiles which then usually seek out their quarters for their winters repose.

Myangie (winter) begins with the first frosts and continues until the mild lengthening days of spring puts it to flight. There is little chance of this season passing unnoticed, as the cold, wet, dreary days thereof are frequently