It may indeed be argued that the locality in which the eaglehawk-crow phratry names are found tells strongly in favour of the racial conflict hypothesis; for it is precisely in this area that the last stand of the aborigines against the invaders may, on the theory put forward by Mr Mathew and accepted by some anthropologists[103], be supposed to have taken place.  But against this must be set the fact that in this area also we find two cockatoos, and on the Annan River two bees, arrayed against one another; unless it can be shown that these two birds are also proverbial foes, or that the Australian native had reached a point in his biological investigations at which he recognised that the presence of two closely allied species in a district involves a particularly keen struggle for existence (which they would, however, regard in such an advanced stage of knowledge as appropriate to the designation of intra-racial rather than inter-racial feuds), the two sets of facts balance one another, and leave us still engaged in a vain quest for a conclusion.

Putting theories as to racial conflicts aside, and dealing with the facts as we find them, we seem to have a choice of two hypotheses.  Either the eaglehawk-crow myths were told before the phratry names came into existence, or they were invented to explain the existence of the phratry names.  Let us assume that none of the unknown names mean eaglehawk or crow, and that the eaglehawk-crow area has remained approximately the same size, or has, at any rate, not diminished (excluding, of course, those cases where it seems to have lost ground owing to the disappearance of phratry names altogether, as among the Kurnai); we must then, on the second theory, assume that the story of the combat spread to tribes with completely different phratry names like the Urabunna, and got mixed up with their ceremonies of initiation (the most sacred part of the mythology of the Australian natives, and one not likely to be much influenced by chance intruders); and that it came even in some cases to be told of Baiame, the creator and institutor of the rites of initiation, who is represented as himself taking part in the conflict and gaining a victory over the foes of mankind[104].  On the whole, therefore, this view of the case appears improbable.

To the theory that the Eaglehawk-Crow story was originally independent of the phratry names no such objections apply.  We are indefinitely remote from the period at which the anthropologist will be able to do for Australia what Franz Boas has done for the North-West of America—­draw up a table showing the resemblances and differences between the stock of folktales of the different tribes, or, which is more important for our present purpose, of the main divisions, eastern, central, and western, which the analysis of initiation ceremonies gives us—­a tripartite division which Curr also makes on the linguistic side, though Mathew’s map shows considerable intermixture