As the Rev. John Mathew has pointed out in his work, Eaglehawk and Crow, there are found in Australia, especially in the south-eastern portion, a number of myths relating to the conflicts of these birds.  These myths he interprets as echoes of a long-past conflict between the aboriginal Negrito race and the invading Papuans, and traces the origin of the phratries to the same racial strife.  As an explanation of exogamy the hypothesis is clearly insufficient, but it is evident that no theory of the origin of the phratries can leave exogamy out of the question.  The point, however, with which we are immediately concerned is the myth on which in the main Mr Mathew based his theory.  Unfortunately, he did not think it necessary to attempt to define either the area covered by the different phratry names—­an omission which is remedied by the present work—­nor yet the limits within which the myth in question or its analogues are part of the native mythology.  These analogues to the story of the battle of Eaglehawk and Crow, ended in the Darling area according to tradition by a treaty between the contending birds, are myths in which birds are said to have destroyed the human race, or a large portion of it, to have contended with Baiame, or one of the other gods, or to have figured in some other conflict[102].  The bird of this myth—­the bird conflict myth, as it may be termed—­is the Eaglehawk.  Possibly, as I have pointed out in the note in Man, both bird conflict myths and Eaglehawk-Crow myths—­they may be termed collectively bird myths—­may go back to a common origin.  So far as Mr Mathew’s evidence goes, bird myths do not seem to be told outside the colony of Victoria and the Darling area of New South Wales.

A little research, however, shows that this idea is altogether erroneous.  There are unfortunately large areas in Australia, as to the mythology of which we know absolutely nothing.  Therefore it must not be supposed that the bird conflict myth is confined to the districts in which we have evidence of its existence.  We may rather infer that a myth so widely distributed—­it ranges from the head of the Bight, 129 deg.  E., to the coast north of Sydney, and probably as far as Moreton Bay; to the north it is found among the Urabunna, and probably elsewhere—­is common property of the Australian Tribes.

A glance at the map will show that the eaglehawk and crow myth covers but a small portion of the area in which the bird conflict myth is found.  On the other hand we find within the eaglehawk-crow myth district the phratry names Cockatoo, three names of unknown meaning, and the doubtful Kiraru—­Kirarawa.  Now if a racial conflict is indicated by the names eaglehawk and crow, this must be either because the contending races were already known by these names, or because the two birds in question are proverbially hostile to each other.  In either case we are left without any explanation of the two cockatoo phratries.