THE NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA

xix, (i errata), 819 pages, 58 illustrations, 10 maps – 9 folding, folding genealogical table, original light green cloth with gilt vignette on the upper cover and gilt titling on the spine. The cloth is dull, some foxing mainly on the preliminary and final pages, spotting on the uncut page edges.

'Howitt, Alfred William (1830–1908) explorer, natural scientist and pioneer authority on Aboriginal culture and social organization, was born on 17 April 1830 at Nottingham, England, the oldest surviving son of William Howitt and his wife Mary, née Botham. He was educated in England, Heidelberg and University College School, London. In 1852, under the press of family needs, he went with his father and brother Charlton to Melbourne where they had been preceded in 1840 by William's youngest brother Godfrey. A reunion was one purpose of the visit but William and his sons also intended to try their fortunes on the new goldfields. They did so with modest success at intervals in the next two years. The experience turned the course of Alfred's life. He learned to live with confidence in the bush, and its natural phenomena, so strange and as yet so little studied, stimulated his mind to their scientific study. In 1854 his father and brother returned to England but Howitt elected to remain, thoroughly at home in the Australian scene......,,In his last phase, 1891-1907, Howitt was a high official with little opportunity for fieldwork yet wrote with unflagging zeal two dozen papers and The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904); although a summation of his work it is probably not his best memorial. In his last years he still had formative ideas to offer on many topics, including the ritual significance of the newly-discovered bullroarer and the ethnological puzzle of the Tasmanian and Australian Aboriginals. His output was the more remarkable in view of protracted, and on his part courteous, controversy with anthropological critics, the counter-attraction of botanical and petrological research and the cares of high office.' Australian Dictionary of Biography, by W.E.H. Stanner.