Meaningless in Europe, what meaning have these designs in Australia? Though certainty is impossible, I take it that they were first purely decorative, before the mythical and symbolical meaning was read into them by the savages. They occur on the mystic 'bull-roarers' of Central Queensland, but I do not learn that in Queensland the circles and so on are interpreted or deciphered as among the Arunta.[8] Still, they occur here in a religious connection--the bull-roarer being swung at the mysteries--and they are carved on trees at mysteries held far south in New South Wales.[9] But even in Central Australia the markings sometimes occur as purely decorative, on one rock or other object, while on others they are sacred, and are interpreted as records of legends,[10] according to Spencer and Gillen. There are 'ordinary rock-paintings,' and certain other drawings, in many cases not distinguishable from some of the first series, so far as their form is concerned, but belonging to a class all of which are spoken of as churinga ilkinia, and are regarded as sacred because they are associated with totems. Each local totemic group has certain of these specially belonging to the group, and in very many cases preserved on rock-surfaces in spots which are strictly _tabu_ to the women, children, and uninitiated men.' One of the commonest I represents a snake coming out of a hole in a rock,' which the wriggle out of the cup in our circle-marked stones would stand for fairly well. Some designs are only 'play-work;' others exactly similar, on another spot, have a definite meaning. The meaning is read, where the spot is sacred ground. The concentric circles are 'believed, on good ground, to have been derived from an original spiral.' 'It is much more easy to imagine a series of concentric circles originating out of a spiral than to imagine a spiral originating out of a series of concentric circles.' In this country the spiral seems to be later than the circle. These devices not only occur on fixed rocks and portable churinga, they are also painted on the bodies of boys when initiated in the mysteries: 'concentric circles with radiating lines preponderate.' In Mr. Haddon's 'Decorative Art of British New Guinea' he describes designs of concentric circles and spirals which are clearly derivatives of drawings of the human face.[11] Thus our concentric circles and spirals _may,_ in the last resort, have been derived from drawings of the human face, though _diablement changés en route_. What, then, however we interpret the origin, decorative or symbolic, of the sacred designs, is their significance as understood by the Arunta of Central Australia at the present time?