The natives of southwestern Australia regard shining stones with so much veneration that only sorcerers or priests are believed to be worthy to handle them, and so great is the faith in the innate power of such objects that any ordinary native does not dare to touch them and cannot even be bribed so to do. For the preservation of the virtue of these stones it is considered essential that no woman shall be permitted to touch them, or even to look upon them. A particular form of talisman is made by winding lengths of opossum yarn about a fragment of quartz, of carnelian, of chalcedony, or some other attractive stone, and thus forming a round ball about the size of a crochet-ball; these are worn suspended from the girdle. Talismans of this type are very highly prized for their supposed power to cure diseases, and in case of illness a tribe which is not provided with one will borrow it from a more fortunate tribe.[639] White quartz is used by the natives in New South Wales, Australia, for the manufacture of a charm to cast a spell over an enemy. This charm is called _muli_, and consists of a fragment of white quartz to which a piece of opossum-fur has been gummed; it must then be smeared with the fat of a dead body and placed in a slow-burning fire. It is confidently believed that the person over whom the spell is cast wastes slowly away and dies.[640] Jade carvings of an exceedingly peculiar type are the _hei-tikis_ (neck-ornaments) greatly prized among the Maoris of New Zealand. The grotesque representation of the human form here realized by the native carvers, the association of these objects, treasured up as heirlooms, with the personality of some renowned ancestor, the story that the special portraiture to be made was sometimes communicated in a dream or vision, all this induces the belief that in former times, though perhaps not at the present time, the Maoris looked upon their _hei-tikis_ as amulets, or possibly even as fetiches.[641] The Dowager Queen Alexandra is said to greatly value as a talisman a pendant consisting of a nugget of massive gold surmounted by a figure of a hunchback, executed in green enamel. The nugget is hollowed out and opens when a secret spring is touched; within appears a heart-shaped ornament made of New Zealand jade. The story runs that this jewel was given to his mother by the late Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of the present King George V.[642]