the circles mentioned in this paper. There is evidence also to believe that the Ancient Mound builders worshipped the sun.

BY MR. HASTINGS C. DENT, C.E., F.L.S.

There are many points in this important paper upon which I should like to write, but my stay in Australia was so short that though I ascertained a good deal, I must not do more than say that all I heard there is confirmed by the author. To study the links between distant nations or people as proved by any similar religious traditions as practices which they respectively hold, is a most valuable sphere of work. May I mention one point upon which the author seems to contradict himself, viz., the two passages on the second page of the paper where he denies "that religiousness is a thing of man's own invention," &c., and the allusion to the "red heifer" of the Israelites, offered " probably with some reference to the Egyptian ideas about this colour." There appears to be in this a tendency to state that the Hebrew records which we hold to be the inspired Word of God, adopted heathen customs. Is it not a much more reasonable—as well as a more lofty-view, to hold that the oral inspiration given to the primeval nations was the true origin of the degraded mythologies which we meet with in the most ancient religions? And that this oral inspiration was the preparation for the elaborate system of type and ritual revealed eventually to Moses, and by him reduced to writing. I would have liked the author, as he was dealing with the " religiousness of nations," to say something as to the capability of the Australian aborigines to understand and accept the Christian religion, and their receptivity as to civilisation, &c. I venture to suggest that had the author, with his wide experience, given us some information on this subject, the practical value of the paper would have been very considerably enhanced. I heard and have read much as to the great success of mission work among the natives, both by Roman Catholic and Anglican Missionaries, but had no opportunity of seeing it. But as regards capacity for civilisation, I met some black boys from Western Australia and the Northern Territory, ages from ten to thirteen years; they were travelling on board my steamer from Port Darwin to Brisbane and other parts of Queensland, so I had an opportunity of gauging their powers, &c. They were returning as servants to some miners who were going home after an unsuccessful hunt for gold.

The boys had been taken from the wild tribes, had had no more than a few months' intercourse with white men, yet could talk English well, were very intelligent, and sang English songs very prettily. From all I gathered in Australia (and I visited every part between Port Darwin, along Queensland, down to Adelaide) these aborigines,—reputed to be one of the lowest races of mankind,appear to have in them all the powers with which man is endowed, and the rising generation is capable of being formed into respectable civilised and religious communities. Of course, from Port Darwin to Brisbane was the most available field for inquiry, as the natives there have not been so entirely "wiped out," or, at least, are more easily reached than in New South Wales, Victoria, or South Australia. In fact, from all I gathered, this appears to offer the greatest opportunities for success of all the foreign fields of mission work that I have seen.

Analogy (d), "the fish-shaped roarer," which the author compares with the Chaldæan god, half man half fish, requires notice, as to the wide-spread relics of fish-worship. The god Vishnu (of India) is described as "incarnate, in the form of a fish, to recover the sacred books lost in the Deluge." The fish was worshipped by the Cuthites or Phoenicians, and relics thereof appear abundantly in Ireland (in which country the round towers are perhaps the best known remains of this very early race). On one of the ancient and beautiful pre-Christian crosses at Kells, county Meath, I have lately seen a carving of six men on their knees worshipping a huge fish as big as themselves. When I was

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at Fuchau, on the Min river, in China, in October, 1886, I visited the Kushan (Buddhist) monastery, situated aloft in the seclusion of a mountain dell; there is here a huge tank or pond full of sacred fish, mostly perch, some of which are an enormous size. The worshippers at these shrines can, for a few “cash" (a cash is about 1-25th of a penny), buy a lot of biscuits, which they throw into the pond, and immediately the holy fish rise in hundreds to the surface and devour the offerings of the devotees.

The mention of fire worship in Analogy (g) is rather too brief. The author might at least have said that this is none other than the worship of Baal. Abundant traces thereof are preserved to this day in Ireland, in names of places or dedications of ancient temples to Cuthite demigods transformed into Christian saints, all of whom are now represented as having lived about the time of St. Patrick, but there yet remains a tradition at Glenda

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lough, co. Wicklow, that in ancient times the heathen priest used to ascend the fine round tower (which has been lately restored) and at sunrise called aloud the name of Baal four times, once from each of the four openings or windows at the summit of the tower, which face the cardinal points of the compass. (Cf. 1 Kings xviii. 26, &c., as to Baal among the Israelites.) Apart from the religious links of affinity between nations, and quite outside the limits of discussion of Mr. Fraser's paper, is the last word I would like to add, but it may perhaps be ruled "out of order." It is, however, an instance of how a link may be traced which has never been thought of The case in point is the affinity of the Indians of Alaska with the Botocudos of Eastern Brazil. I had the opportunity of attending a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, when a paper was read by Mr. Stearn on his explorations of the Rio Doce in Brazil, and his sojourn among the Botocudos for a month. In the discussion, Mr. Colin Mackenzie (whom I met in Brazil in 1884) stated that he had traced the custom of the monstrous lip disc worn by the Botocudos, from the eastern coast of Central Brazil, through the interior, by Central America, to the West Coast in California and thence up to Alaska, where the custom is also found to-day.

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REPLY BY THE AUTHOR.

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I have to thank the Chairman and those who have taken part in the discussion for their kind approbation of my paper. I may be allowed to state that it was written to combat the theory held by some ethnologists that our Australian blacks are a race distinct from the rest of mankind. Against this theory my argument is briefly this :-The blacks of Western Africa have certain rites and ceremonies, evidently of a religious and sacred character, through which young men have to pass at their opening manhood. The blacks of Australia have similar ceremonies, of a similar import, and in some particulars, identical with those of Africa; therefore these two races must have drawn their rites of initiation from a common origin and a common source, for it is impossible to believe that two races of mankind, now located so far from each other, and with no opportunities of contact for thousands of years bygone, should have, apart and of themselves, worked out the same beliefs by mere thinking.* My introductory remarks, to which Mr. Stephenson refers, were meant to say that man is found to have everywhere a share in the common religious instinct planted in him by God, and, it may be, in a common primitive revelation given by God. All mankind are therefore in this respect homogeneous; but if men were found anywhere who were void of this instinct, the mere use of the thinking faculty would not lead them to religious beliefs and acts of worship.

As to the "red heifer," I should have expressed my meaning more accurately if I had said the red colour of the heifer in the Mosaic ordinance had probably some reference to the notions about that colour which we find among the Hamite races, of which the early Egyptians were a part. I did not intend to say that any portion of the Mosaic ritual was borrowed from the Egyptians. To the white race black is the evil colour; to the black race white is the spiritcolour, and red is evil.

As to the analogies which may be drawn from Baal worship, I spoke of them as briefly as possible, because they are so well known in Britain.

* A valuable paper on "The Ethnology of the Pacific,” by the Rev. S. J. Whitmee, F.R.G.S., vol. xiv., p. 16, tends to support this view.-ED.

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I may here be asked how I came to possess a full account of the Bora ceremonies, when the blacks hold them as sacred, and will not divulge them. So silent are they on this point that, so far as I know, no one had previously obtained, or at least published, full information about these ceremonies. Well, about sixty years ago it was the custom in this colony for the Government to give grants of Crown land of considerable extent to immigrant gentlemen who were in a position to occupy and improve the land. The father of a friend of mine got a grant in this way, and went to take possession. As I have explained in the paper itself, he was coming down the hill towards the spot where he intended to build his house, when a tribe of blacks camped there rushed off in alarm, taking him to be "Wunda," a spirit; but, reassured by his gestures, they came near, and finding him to resemble a chief of theirs, who had just died, they claimed him as one of themselves! His son, as might be expected, grew up on terms of intimacy with the blacks on the estate, and has always treated them with kindness; they will tell him anything. At my request he got a young black, who had just been initiated, to tell him all about the Bora. I have in various ways tested information thus given, and I am convinced that it is full and accurate.

In the month of September, 1888, there was some correspondence in the Times on the subject of Australian arithmetic. A distinguished authority there says, "One of the clearest indications of the low mental power of savages is that afforded by arithmetic.” It seems to me that this statement is too general; for even, although the power of counting up to high numbers were wanting in a savage, it does not follow that his mental powers in general are low. Perception, cognition, and memory are mental powers; but if Sir John Lubbock's memory were weak and yet the cognitive and perceptive faculties remained strong and vigorous, it would be unjust to say that he is a man "of low mental power." Colonists who have been long familiar with the blacks of Australia, with one voice cry out against the assertion that they are of low mental power, and could give hundreds of instances to the contrary. A friend of mine who, in his boyhood, fifty years ago, was much in contact with the tribe in the midst of which his father had settled, has told me that two black boys, his companions, were "out-andout good chess-players, taking plenty of time to study the moves, and showing great patience and calmness; these boys never went to school, and yet they could count up to a thousand." It is very clear that mental power was there, in these boys, but unseen and