This is a fascinating report on some aspects of the lives and beliefs of the aborigines of Central Australia. While the author does not pretend to extensive training in either psychology or anthropology, he is obviously well-informed in both fields. What his book may lack in authority is offset by its refreshing freedom from some of the more tedious manifestations of expertness.

The author set out to investigate the facts behind the repeated accounts which implicitly or explicitly foster the notion of a mysterious, if not supernatural, reality behind the occult aura which completely envelops the otherwise outwardly drab lives of the aborigines. Technically, the primitive tribes of Central Australia have never progressed very far from stone-age culture. They still live a hand-to-mouth nomadic existence, without agriculture, clothes, and with few implements beside the primitive digging stick and the boomerang. It has frequently been reported that their means of communication over great distances, ostensibly with no apparatus for effecting this