In spite of the deficiencies of our evidence we may perhaps incline to the view that the bird myth dates back to a very early period.  Until it has been shown that intrusive elements are not only taken up into the tribal stock of tales, but also incorporated in the more sacred portion of those tales, which are told at the tribal mysteries, it will always remain more probable that the myth belongs to the two divisions as a result of lineal and not lateral transmission.  If this is so the differences between the initiation ceremonies, no less than the anthropomorphic form of the myth in the eastern division, as compared with the purely theriomorphic story of the central division and the mixed form of the Ikula, will enable us to say that the period when the separation of the divisions took place must be very remote.

There is, therefore, no inherent improbability in supposing that the bird myth was told before the phratry names were invented or adopted, and that the latter were in some cases taken from the principal characters in the myth.  This conclusion is supported by the fact that the phratry names seem to be subsequent to the present grouping, if we may take as our guide the fact that the frontiers of the phratry names correspond with the boundaries between the central and eastern divisions.  The fact that there is a cross division, if we base our reasoning on the class organisation, need not of course be taken into account, for we have every reason to believe that the classes are subsequent to the phratries.

In favour of the derivation of the phratry names from the myth tells also the five-fold division of the eaglehawk-crow groups into Muquara and Kilpara, Bunjil and Waa, Merung and Yuckembruk, Multa or Malian and Umbe.  For it is clearly more probable that the names should have been taken from a common object than that they should have been in their origin identical in form and subsequently differentiated, as the languages changed; we have in fact direct evidence of a tendency to preserve the old names, which we may perhaps regard as the sacred names, after the bird has been rebaptised in the terminology of daily life.  Over and above this we have of course the fact that the sacred language has, generally speaking, both in Australia and elsewhere, this unchanging character.  But this simple name-borrowing theory, it is clear, is equally valid as an explanation of the facts.

Although we cannot determine the meaning of the names the quadripartite division of the Mallera-Wuthera[105] and allied phratries in the north is evidence of a similar tendency.  It is by no means impossible that Mallera, Yungaroo, and Pakoota all mean the same thing. (This ignorance of the meaning of the phratry and class names is prima facie evidence of their high antiquity.) In the newly-discovered phratry names of the eight-class tribes we have yet another instance of tripartite division.  If we may assume that Illitchi, Uluuru, and Wiliuku are from the same