known to Mathews were employed in the pastoral industry. Mathews' reports show that these historical changes found expression in ceremonial life. Motifs of cattle, locomotives, horses and white people were carved into the ground at ceremonial sites in New South Wales. Mathews' work on Kamilaroi initiation was cited extensively in a famous debate between Lang and Hartland about whether Aborigines "possessed the conception of a moral Being". Much of Mathews' research on ceremony was conducted during preparatory and rehearsal periods, rather than during the initiation rituals themselves. Thomas suggests that this may have been intentional on the part of Mathews' informants, since it allowed them to control what secret-sacred information was revealed to an outsider. That Mathews was permitted even this degree of access is evidence of the degree to which he was trusted. He was given a number of sacred instruments relating to initiation ceremonies, now in the collection of the Australian Museum. Information documented by Janet Mathews, originating from Aboriginal elders on the South Coast of New South Wales in the 1960s, indicates that Mathews was himself initiated. Thomas argues that Mathews' refusal to write directly about these experiences shows that his loyalty to the secret culture was "more important than whatever kudos he might have won as an anthropologist in revealing these secrets to the world." Mythology Mathews' first contribution to the study of myth was a series of seven legends from various parts of New South Wales, published in 1898 as "Folklore of the Australian Aborigines" by the anthropological magazine Science of Man. He republished them as a short book the following year. Over the next decade, Mathews published another dozen articles describing Aboriginal myths. While a few legends from Western Australia were documented by a correspondent, the great bulk of Mathews' folklore research was done in person. Mathews' interest in mythology connected with the British interest in folklore study that was a serious branch of inquiry during his lifetime. The Folklore Society, formed in 1878, was dedicated to the study of traditional music, customs, folk art, fairy tales and other vernacular traditions. The society published Folk-Lore, an internationally distributed journal, to which Mathews contributed five articles. In keeping with the Folk-Lore style, Mathews tended to rephrase Aboriginal narratives into respectable English. This was acceptable to his allies Hartland and Lang, both prominent in folklore studies. However, Mathews' rephrasing was queried by Moritz von Leonhardi, the