be passed on the road from boyhood to manhood. "At the age of twelve or fifteen the boys are removed to a place apart from the women, whom they are not permitted to see, and then blind-*folded. Among some other ceremonies their faces are blackened, and they are told to whisper, an injunction peculiarly characteristic of the mysteriousness which is so constant a feature of the rites of puberty. For several months this whispering continues, and it is noteworthy, as a sign of the sexual nature of these proceedings, that the place where the whispers have been "is carefully avoided by the women and children." In the second ceremony, which occurs two or three years later, "the glans penis is slit open underneath, from the extremity to the scrotum, and circumcision is also performed." After this second stage, the Partnapas, as the youths are now styled, "are permitted to take a wife." In the third ceremony each man has a sponsor, by whom he is tatooed with a sharp quartz. These sponsors, moreover, bestow on each lad a new name, which he retains during the remainder of his life. Certain other performances are gone through, such as putting an instrument termed a witarna round the lads' necks, and then "the ceremony concludes by the men all clustering round the initiated ones, enjoining them again to whisper for some months, and bestowing upon them their advice as regards hunting, fighting, and contempt of pain. All these ceremonies are carefully kept from the sight of the women and the children; who, when they hear the sound of the witarna, hide their heads and exhibit every outward sign of terror" (S. L. A., vol. i. p. 113-116).
Leaving Australia, let us pass to Africa, and call Mr. Reade as a witness to some of the rites of puberty existing among the savages of that continent. The following extract is doubly interesting, as furnishing some account of the application to girls of the general principles involved in these rites, and also as supplying, in the author's opinion, that they are of a Phallic nature, a confirmation of the conclusions we had reached from a survey of the evidence as a whole:
"Before they are permitted to wear clothes, marry, and rank in society as men and women, the young have to be initiated into certain mysteries. I received some information upon this head from Mongilomba, after he had made me promise that I
