manners, customs, or languages of tribes remotely apart from one another.

With respect to the presence of birds in a region such as they do not
usually frequent, I may state that at Mount Arden, near the head of
Spencer's Gulf, swans were seen taking their flight high in the air, to
the north, as if making for some river or lake they were accustomed to
feed at. At the Frome river, where it spreads into the plains to the
north of Flinders range; four white cockatoos were found flying about
among the trees, although those birds had not been met with for 200 miles
before I attained that point. [Note 36: Vide Vol. I. July 4, Aug 31,
and March 19.] And about longitude 128 degrees 20 minutes E., when
crossing over towards King George's Sound, large parrots were found coming
from the north-east, to feed upon the berries of a shrub growing on the
sea coast, although no parrots were seen for two or three hundred
miles on either side, either to the east or to the west, they
must, therefore, have come from the interior. Now the parrot is a bird
that often frequents a mountainous country, and always inhabits one
having timber of a better description and larger growth than the
miserable shrubs met with along the coast; it is a bird too that always
lives within reach of permanent fresh-water, as rivers, lakes, creeks,
pools, etc. Can there then be such in the interior, with so barren and
arid a region, bounding it? and how are we to commence an examination
with so many difficulties and embarrassments attending the very outset?

The second series of facts which have attracted my attention, relate to
the Aborigines. It is a well known circumstance that the dialects,
customs, and pursuits in use among them in the various parts of the
continent, differ very much from each other in some particulars, and yet
that there is such a general similarity in the aggregate as to leave no
room to doubt that all the Aborigines of Australia have had one common