what he is doing, and then show you the person in the crystal. A
dinahgurrerhlowah, or moolee, death-dealing stone, which is said to
knock a person insensible, or strike him dead as lightning would by an
instantaneous flash.

To these are added in this miscellaneous collection medicinal herbs,
nose-bones to put through the cartilage of his nose when going to a
strange camp, so that he will not smell strangers easily. The blacks
say the smell of white people makes them sick; we in our arrogance had
thought it the other way on.

Swansdown, shells, and woven strands of opossum's hair are valuable,
and guarded as such in the boondoorr, which is sometimes kept for
safety in the wirreenun's Minggah.

Having dealt with the supernatural part of a wirreenun's training,
which argues cunning in him and credulity in others, I must get to his
more natural remedies.

Snakebite they cure by sucking the wound and cauterising it with a
firestick. They say they suck out the young snakes which have been
injected into the bitten person.

For headaches or pains which do not yield to the vegetable medicine,
the wirreenuns tie a piece of opossum's hair string round the sore
place, take one end in their mouths, and pull it round and round until
it draws blood along the cord. For rheumatic pains in the head or in
the small of the back and loins they often bind the places affected
with coils of opossum hair cord, as people do sometimes with red
knitting-silk.