Author: ETHERIDGE, R.
Title: The Dendroglyphs, or "Carved Trees" of New South Wales.
Description: Sydney, Govt Printer 1918. Quarto publisher's cloth backed printed boards; viii,104pp, frontispiece & numerous illustrations & photos on 29 plates, the last a folding map. A corner a bit bumped, minor browning, rather good. Mem. Geol. Surv. NSW. Ethnological Series, No.3. ¶ Still the essential work and now quite hard to find. Etheridge was convinced that "at no distant date dendroglyphs will have ceased to exist," as was E.S. Hartland in his review of this book: "In years to come it will remain as the only record of these efforts of native art, beyond the few specimens preserved in museums". (Folklore; v31p4). Indeed some of the specimens here were already in museums. While it is true that further examples have been discovered much of what is recorded here has perished and, so I was told by a central west grazier a few years ago, the average property owner who found carved trees on their land would often destroy them as quickly as possible before word got out, the authorities moved in and they lost control of their land.

Keywords: art anthropology Australia aborigines decoration ethnology trees timber