Apart from the fact that the young men had now received a definite name, and that each one had been made ab-moara to some older man under whose charge he was, the details of the third phase were closely similar to those described as characteristic of the second. The same examination of Churinga was carried on, and ceremonies of the same nature as the preceding ones were enacted day after day and night after night. The sustained interest was very remarkable when it is taken into account that mentally the Australian native is merely a child, who acts, as a general rule, on the spur of the moment. On this occasion they were gathered together to perform a series of ceremonies handed down from the Alcheringa, which had to be performed in precisely the same way in which they had been in the Alcheringa. Everything was ruled by precedent; to change even the decoration of a performer would have been an unheard-of thing; the reply, “it was so in the Alcheringa,” was considered as perfectly satisfactory by way of explanation. At the same time despite the natural conservatism of the native mind, changes have come over the tribe since the times when their ancestors lived, to whom the ceremonies now being dealt with refer. For example, not a few of them deal with the existence of cannibalism, and though this may not yet have been wholly discarded, still it is not practised amongst the Arunta except to a very slight extent, whereas, if there be anything in the traditions, it must, in the Alcheringa, have been largely practised.