It seems necessary to mention these details, as I have, in other works, expressed my own opinions on Australian religion and customary law.

[MAKING OF RELIGION, second edition; MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION, second edition.] These opinions I have not, so to speak, edited into the work of Mrs.Parker.The author herself has remarked that, beginning as a disciple of Mr.Herbert Spencer in regard to the religious ideas of the Australians--according to that writer, mere dread of casual 'spirits'-- she was obliged to alter her attitude, in consequence of all that she learned at first hand.

She also explains that her tribe are not 'wild blacks,' though, in the absence of missionary influences, they retain their ancient beliefs, at least the old people do; and, in a decadent form, preserve their tribal initiations, or Boorah.

How she tested and controlled the evidence of her informants she has herself stated, and I venture to think that she could hardly have made a better use of her opportunities.
In one point there is perhaps, almost unavoidably, a lacuna or gap in her information.

The Euahlayi, she says, certainly do not possess the Dieri and Urabunna custom of Pirrauru or Piraungaru, by which married, and unmarried men, of the classes men and women which may intermarry, are solemnly allotted to each other as more or less permanent paramours.
[See Mr.Howitt's NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA, and my SECRET OF THE TOTEM, chapter iii.] That custom, for some unknown reason, is confined to certain tribes possessing the two social divisions with the untranslated names MATTERI and KIRARU.