eat other food placed on the ground some 50 yards from the camp, none of the men would touch eggs left in the same position.
During initiation a Wakelbura youth was not allowed to drink water out of a water-hole unless through a kangaroo bone. Before drinking he must make sure that no woman has been near to or drunk of the water.
One of the Wakelbura was observed to take the tongue out of a certain grey-and-white lizard called Bungah, and give to his little son, a child of about thirteen months old, and gave as a reason for doing so that after eating the tongue his child would soon be able to talk.[1]
In the Unghi tribe a man would not drink out of a place where a woman drank. Certain holes were dug at the water, small circular holes for the men and oval holes for the women. Each sex kept to its own drinking-place.[2]
In the tribes about Maryborough (Q.) a woman must not on any account step over anything belonging to a man. For instance, if a man were making a fishing-line and left it on the ground, and a woman stepped across it, he would throw it away.[3]
This reminds one of the prohibition at the initiation ceremonies—for instance, the Kurnai Jeraeil—as to the novices having anything to do with a woman during their probation. They are specially warned against touching a woman, or letting a woman touch them, or receiving anything from one. Even the shadow of one falling on him would be evil magic. The intention of this is evidently to keep the novices apart from the women.
The practice of magic, or the belief in the harmful magic of others, pervades the daily life of the aborigines. Either it is the baleful influence of a stranger or, as I have just shown, of a man of the other class, or of one of the other sex, or as I shall now show, of some tract of country acting injuriously on strangers.
