299. Degrees of Social Rank.—When the individual reaches the full development of puberty, he or she undergoes a ceremony which entitles him or her on its successful completion to a certain social rant or status in the community. As life progresses, other and higher ranks or degrees are progressively attainable for each sex, until the highest and most honourable grade, that enjoyed by an old man, or an old woman, is reached. Special terms—“climanyms”—are applied for each grade or degree (sect. 68), such names varying with each ethnographical district.

There are four social stages for each individual, male or female, to be initiated into, and it may be many years before all these ceremonials and corresponding grades are reached and passed. It is true that the details of procedure taking place at the initiations into the third and fourth degrees are meagre as compared with the first and second, but the aboriginals were always very chary of imparting information concerning these higher grades even to me who had become intimately connected with them through a knowledge of their written and sign languages and other causes. Further difficulties to be reckoned with were the facts that:—with the gradual depletion of the aboriginal population, the initiation ceremonies of the higher ranks are gradually becoming obsolete, those for the females especially being already very marked; that individuals belonging to the higher grades and consequently older people are not too commonly met with; and that no one is allowed to be present or to assist in the initiation of any degree higher than that of which he is himself a member.