From the lack of any chastisement we may infer that the education given by the parents to their children was a very insignificant one, for it is impossible to conceive of any serious education without coercive treatment, especially at that low stage of culture. But as the children are continually with their mother and very often with their father, the parental influence must be of great importance in the questions of the arts of life and of all the knowledge necessary in tribal affairs. We read in several places of the control and educative influence exercised by the mother on her children (Kurnai, Euahlayi, Georgina Blacks, Herbert River tribes, North-West Australian tribes according to Withnell, Salvado). The father makes toys for his children and teaches the boys how to throw the spear, use the boomerang, and so on (Curr on Australians in general; Encounter Bay; Turnbull; Salvado; compare also Dr. Fraser's statement). Here it must be remembered that education depends still more on another set of facts, namely on the facts of initiation and the secret society formed by all initiated men. The boy's education begins with the moment when he leaves his parents, joins the young men's camp, and begins to undergo a series of initiations. At any rate he begins then to be educated in quite a new order of ideas, initiated into the tribal mysteries, etc. And apparently he has then to submit to a severe _régime_, besides going through the ordeal of initiation itself. It seems, therefore, that the education received by the children in their parents' camp, where they are probably more under the influence of their mother and perhaps of other women who happen to be in the same encampment, that this education is definitive only for the females, who can learn from their mothers all they will want in their future life. For the boys this first education is of secondary importance. All they have learned of the tribal traditions and beliefs--their whole knowledge of the world--is destroyed at the initiation and replaced by a new one. We see, therefore, that the relations between parents and children are limited to a relatively short period; for the girls marry at about ten years of age, and the boys at the same age leave their parental camp and begin a new life. These facts are so important, as characterizing the aboriginal family life, that we must dwell upon them more in detail. III