Natives of Australia

Contents

PAGE

LIST OF PLATES, . ix

PREFACE, . xi

Chapter I

Geographical : area, ocean depths, mountains, river system, rain¬ fall, temperature. Flora: woodlands, pastures, scrub, spinifex. Fauna : marsupials, birds, reptiles, insects. The dingo. Antiquity of man : Warnambool footprints, age of man in New South Wales and Victoria. Tasmanians and Australians.

Origin of Australians : Negrito and Dravidian elements, Papuan influence. Early theories. Culture of Australia, . i

Chapter II

Stature of the Arunta. Physiognomy. Pigmentation, skin, hair.

Body scars. Small extremities. Natives of South Australia and Queensland. Racial foetor. Track of foot. Carriage of body, . 19

Chapter III Language, Art, Science

Language. Message Sticks. Tribal messengers. Gesture lan¬ guage. Art, ground-drawings, rock-drawings, paintings, the red hand, Grey’s figures. Science, astronomy, sun, moon, stars, eclipses. Medicine, magic, bleedings, healing of wounds, snake-bite ; herbal remedies, treatment of burns, diseases of aborigines. Relative mortality from wounds and diseases, ..........

v

VI

Chapter IV Arts And Crafts

PAGE

Arts and crafts : stone axes, knives, drills, etc. ; bones, teeth, shells as tools. Water-carriers. Fish hooks. Gum. Pig¬ ments. String-making, hair, fibre; knots and splices. Baskets and nets. Contents of woman’s bag. Fire-making, drill, saw. Clothing and ornaments. Oiling and painting of body, 48

CHAPTER V ARTS AND CRAFTS — C01lti?lUed

Huts. Arrangement of camp. Salutations. Weapons : boome¬ rang, club, spear, wommera, etc. Canoes : raft, bark, dug-out, outrigged canoe, . . . . . . . 7°

Chapter VI Food

Fishing, hooks, nets, weirs, etc. ; cooking. Fowling, snaring, netting, etc. ; cooking. Tracking. Hunting, spearing kan¬ garoos, cooking, opossums ; tree-climbing. Crocodile noos¬ ing. Food tabus. Division of game. Cannibalism, food, ceremonial, magical. Moths, grubs as food. Honey. Fer¬ mented liquors. Water-finding. Cultivation of plants. Nardoo, zamia nuts, yams, etc. Pituri, .... 88

Chapter VII The Pleasures Of Life

Dances : Kuri dance, Molongo; religious dances ; dramatic dances; mimetic dances. Musical instruments, corroboree music, songs and bards. Amusements, domestication of animals ; games, cat’s cradle, imitating footprints, bogy games, make-believe games, dolls, imitating elders. Athletic sports. Hand games. Toys, throwing sticks, ball, hide-and-seek, wit-wit,. 119

Chapter XII

DISPOSAL OF DEAD. THE SOUL

Burial customs, West Australia, Arunta. Exposure in tree. Divi¬ nation of murderer. Ghost of dead. Burial cannibalism. Dieri burial customs. Adelaide tribe. Victoria. Corpse roasting and burning. Exposure in Queensland. Mourning customs. Hair of dead man. Widow. Future life, ghosts, land of dead, dreams. Idea of the soul in Queensland. Where the children come from. Arunta reincarnation, .

Chapter XIII

Definitions proposed. Mythical beings of Dieri and Arunta. Baiame. Combats with and of birds. ^Etiological myths. Arunta religion. Baiame again. Daramulun. Nurrundere. Bunjil. Koen. The tikovina. Other gods and evil spirits. Spirits of dead feared. Totemism. Nagualism, .

PAGE

VUl

Chapter XIV Page

Intichiuma ceremonies. Evil magic, pointing. Woman’s magic.

Hair in magic. Crystals. Kidney fat. Rain-making. Ini¬ tiation of medicine-men. Queensland magic, dooming a person, . . . . . • . . . . 229

Chapter XV

Deluge. Bunyip, Mindi. Origin of death. Origin of man.

Origin of fire. Origin of the sun, ...... 243

BIBLIOGRAPHY, . 251

INDEX, . 252

LIST OF PLATES i. Kaitisli man,

II. Central Australian landscape, in. Central Australian water-hole, iv. Victorian woman, .

Va. N. Queensland man,

b. Weipa native with ear cylinder, .

c. Native of Mapoon, .

VI. N. Queensland natives at work, . VII-, viii. Cave paintings, N.W. Australia, ix. Fire-making,

X. Victoria River women,

XI. Etheridge River man,

XII. Barwon River man, xiii. N. Queensland camp,

XIV#. Two-storied humpy, b. Outrigged canoe, . xv. Throwing the boomerang, .

XVI. Arunta warriors,

XVII. Spear-throwing, xvm. Grave mound, N.S.W.,

xix. Bark canoe, xx. Tree-climbing,

b

Frojitispiece facing page 4 i a u

» 29

» 39) 40 61

IX

X xxi. Arunta decorated for a corroboree,

. facing page xxn. Molongo (corroboree), .

xxili. Arunta children, .

• xxiv., xxv. Shields,

XXVI. A Queensland belle, xxvii. Arunta boys,

• xxviii#. Duel, ....

b. Initiation ceremony,

XXIX., xxx. Kaitish totercyc ceremony, .

. ,, 200,

XXXI. Arunta „ „ xxxii. Strangling cord, .

• jj

Map of Australia.

Preface

Savages, or, as they are better termed, peoples in the lower stages of culture, are studied by anthropological experts more and more closely every year, though in England and British possessions generally there is little money, public or private, available for expeditions, costly or otherwise ; but the results of these researches appear in a form at once too technical and too bulky to attract the ordinary reader, who wishes to learn something of the life of these children of nature. In the British Isles, where there are few families but send some member into our dependencies as Government official, soldier, or colonist, interest in the subject races of the empire should be especially keen ; the present series is intended to supply, in handy and readable form, the needs of those who desire to learn something of the life of these races, who, even if they are less civilised than ourselves, are perhaps not less worthy of study than beetles and jellyfish.

The contributors to the series will, as a rule, be per¬ sonally acquainted with the peoples of whom they treat ; in other cases, the present work included, no statement will be made for which good authority can¬ not be cited, though, in the interest of the general reader, the text will be unencumbered with footnotes. There is in preparation a bibliography of the literature relating to the aborigines of Australia; from this it

Xll will be possible to verify all the statements in the present volume.

I am indebted to my friend Mr. Norman Hardy’s artistic and anthropological skill for the sketches re¬ produced in Plates XV. and XVII. Dr. R. H. Marten, of Adelaide, was good enough to obtain from Mr. P. E. Cowle a number of photographs taken by Mr. F. R. Scott, of which ten are reproduced in this volume. I owe to Captain Bradshaw the photograph for Plate X., and to Dr. Haddon the loan of Blandowski’s rare work for Plate XXVIII. I am indebted to the Council of the Moravian Missions for the loan of the blocks for Plates IV., V., VI., XIII., and XIV. ; and to the Council of the Anthropological Institute, for Plates vil, viil, xix., xxiv., xxv., and xxxn.

Dr. Seligmann has been good enough to communi¬ cate to me the result of some inquiries into gesture-language in North Queensland, made for him by Captain Pirn ; I have learnt much from Mrs. Stow (Mrs. Langloh Parker) ; and Madame Bird’s reminis¬ cences have also been put at my disposal. My heartiest thanks are due to all the ladies and gentlemen named here, and to others who have promised information, which I hope to utilise in a general work on the aborigines, now in preparation. I shall be glad to send a list of questions to any one who will either supply me with information on special points, or send photographs, with brief descriptions.

NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS.

Chapter I Introductory

Geographical : area, ocean depths, mountains, river sys¬ tem, rainfall, temperature. Flora : woodlands, pastures, scrub, spinifex. Fauna: marsupials, birds, reptiles, in¬ sects. The dingo. Antiquity of man : Warnambool footprints, age of man in New South Wales and Victoria. Tasmanians and Australians. Origin of Australians : Negrito and Dravidian elements, Papuan influence. Early theories. Culture of Australia.

Australia has been described as the largest island 3-tid the smallest continent on the globe, but in its general character it conforms to the continental model. If this is true from a geographical point of view, it is still more true from the standpoint of anthropology, zoology, and botany, as will be made clear in the sections devoted to these subjects. Although its shape is irregular, the coast is broken by few important inlets ; in the south is the great sweep of the Australian Bight, and coriesponding to it the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north-east. But, with these exceptions, the breaks in the regular curves of the coast are small. The area of Australia is rather less than 3,000,000 square miles — that is, some 20 per cent, less than that of Europe ; but whereas the length of the Euro¬ pean coasts is estimated at from 19 to 48,000 miles,

A excluding the islands and the Asiatic frontier, that of Australia is no more than 9000 miles in length.

On the west Australia has no near neighbours ; on the south the island of Tasmania or Van Diemen’s Land, as it was formerly called, was ages ago part of the Australian continent, falling as it does within the 100-fathom line. Bass’s Strait is 150 miles in breadth ; but it is bridged by islands north of Cape Portland ; the greatest distance is from Wilson’s Promontory to Kent’s Group — about 50 miles.

South-east lie the New Zealand islands at a distance of 1000 miles ; and the next inhabited island, prior to the European invasion — New Caledonia — was nearly 1000 miles north of them, at a distance of 800 miles from the east coast of Australia. Outside this island stretches a chain including the New Hebrides, Santa Cruz, the Solomon Islands, and Bismarck Archipelago, right up to the east coast of New Guinea. New Guinea is separated from Australia by Torres Straits, likewise bridged by islands. It is 90 miles in width, and so shallow that a depth of 60 feet is only occa¬ sionally exceeded. There is reason to believe that land communication existed between New Guinea and Australia in comparatively recent times, and the evidence for this does not rest on the character of Torres Straits only. Stretching along the north-east coast of Australia for 1200 miles, with but one safe opening for ships, is the Great Barrier Reef. This strongly suggests a former shore-line, and Dr. Jack points out that the bays and estuaries on the same portion of the coast indicate a submerged valley.

In the north-west of Australia we have the Sunda Islands, the nearest being i imor, distant about 300 miles , but here the continental shelf, which, as we have seen, connects Australia with Tasmania and New Guinea, extends little more than half-way, and the channel is over 1000 fathoms deep on the shortest line, and over 200 fathoms deep at all points between Australia and Timor.

Following the rule that the highest mountains are found on the side of a continent bounded by the deepest ocean, the greatest elevations in Australia are on the east. Starting with the Australian Alps, forming the continuation of the Dividing Range of Victoria, we have an almost unbroken series of uplands running northwards, at no great distance from the sea ; the height seldom falls below 2000 feet, and Mt. Kosciusko and other summits attain 5000 to 7000 feet. More compact is the central tableland round Macdonnell Range with a continuation towards North-West Cape. North of Adelaide and south of Perth are found two other upland areas; but . with these exceptions and a broken chain from Selwyn Range north-west to Mt. Cockburn, the surface is, as a rule, less than 2000 feet above the sea.

Along the north-west coast, round the Gulf of Car¬ pentaria, and over a great part of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, the land lies lower than 500 feet above the sea ; Lake Eyre, in fact, the north¬ west end of the so-called Central Plain, is but 70 feet above the sea, though it lies nearly 250 miles from the nearest point of the coast. The channel of the Murray is even lower. At Morgan, 400 miles from the sea, the elevation varies from 3 to 10 feet, according to the season ; and from Swan Hill to the mouth, about 950 miles, the fall is little over 200 feet. The evidence of subsidence afforded by the soundings between Tas¬ mania on the one hand and New Guinea on the other, and confirmed by the facts as to the Barrier Reef, is further supported by the investigations of the Victorian Department of Mines in the Murray valley. It has been shown by Dr. Howitt that the old Murray channel, discovered by boring, could not have discharged water into the sea, unless the land were at least 270 feet

higher than it is at present.

The river system of Australia is in many ways pecu¬ liar. There are three important watersheds : one is at the south end of the Gulf, another east and south-east of the central tableland, and the third is the Riverina, drained by the Murray-Darling. But the term ‘ drained by’ is almost a misnomer. In Europe from 20 to 50 per cent, of the rainfall flows away in rivers ; whereas in the Darling at Bourke less than 10 per cent, of the rainfall of its catchment area is collected ; not only so, but from Bourke to the sea, a distance of 550 miles in a direct line, the river gives up water rather than re¬ ceives it. After heavy rain, however, the great plains are flooded, so much so that Oxley, in 1817, believed himself to be on the shores of a great inland sea. The flood water, however, sinks into the ground in a few hours in many cases, and, unlike other continents, the soil of Australia does not give back in the form of springs the moisture thus absorbed. If the rivers of

Landscape, Central Australia (p. ^.)

the south-east are uncertain in their flow, this is still more the case with the streams which at times flow into Lake Eyre. Many of them disappear in the sand, though their beds bulk largely on the map. The result of this is, that one explorer describes the country as a barren desert; while another, visiting it at flood-time, sees nothing but marsh land ; and a third, coming soon after him, finds a fertile plain. Floods are not, however, confined to the Riverina and centre; the rainfall of Australia is greatest on the east coast, reaching 50 inches at Sydney, as against 14 inches at Wentworth, nearly 500 miles inland. But the east coast in the early part of the last century was visited by droughts, varied by extraordinary floods, the Hawkesbury rising 93 feet above its usual level at some points. In 1867 the town of Richmond was nearly submerged by a rise of 60 feet. The effect of these extraordinary changes on fauna and flora, and indirectly on humanity, may be imagined.

As regards climate, the temperature at Melbourne in the south ranges from 30° to ioo° in the shade, with a mean of 58°, but the hot wind from the interior sends the thermometer up to an extraordinary height at times, over 127 in the shade having been recorded ; this is sometimes followed by an equally rapid fall, the temperature dropping 6o° or 70° in a few hours.

The vegetation of Australia is for the most part singulaily sombre and uniform in tone; an exception to this is the flora of the coastal portion of Cape York Peninsula, which contains many elements of Papuan origin, immigrants through Torres Straits. The vegetation of the Australian woodlands is luxuriant, if monotonous ; foremost among forest trees is the eucalyptus, which often attains a height of 250 and sometimes exceeds 400 feet. The various species of acacia with their yellow blossoms add to the beauty of the spring landscape, and the grass-tree (Xanthorrhaea) is a peculiar feature. But we miss the varied tints of the European landscape, for upper and under side of the leaves are alike in hue. There are, however, conspicuous exceptions in the sheltered valleys of New South Wales, where, as at Illawarra, the flametree makes the mountain slopes conspicuous for miles.

Australia is, to the Englishman, a country of grazing land ; and in the downs of Queensland and New South Wales we have open mountain plains abounding in nutritious grasses. But the feature really peculiar to Australia is the scrub country. A large portion of South Australia and Victoria is clothed with various dwarf species of eucalyptus, known generally as Mallee ; in appearance it is not unlike a willow or osier, and the stems are so thickly studded that ten or twelve are found on a square foot of ground ; they grow to the height of 14 foot without a branch, cover¬ ing sometimes thousands of miles with an unbroken mass of dark-brown vegetation. More dreaded by the explorer is the Mulga scrub, consisting of dwarf acacias, irregular bushes armed with strong spines, which make progress impossible. Next in importance to the mallee scrub in the area which it covers is the ‘heath,’ consisting of level, sandy tracts, grassless, almost treeless, but clothed with a mass of stunted,

A Water-hole in C. Australia (p. 6)

woody vegetation, about 2 feet high. From lat. 28° northwards is found the spinifex or porcupine grass ; it covers the sandy plains for hundreds of miles, and the area taken up by it is probably greater than by any other Australian plant. Spinifex is a hard, spiny grass, growing in tussocks of from 18 inches to 5 feet in diameter ; its shoots are stiff and sharp, of a yellowish colour when full grown, and quite uneatable even by camels. When the whole surface of the ground is clothed with it, horses are useless, and may have to be destroyed owing to their feet and legs being injured.

If the flora of Australia is characteristic, the fauna is no less remarkable. The only representatives of groups familiar to us in the Old World are rats and mice, all small, and the dingo, or wild dog, possibly in¬ troduced by the earliest human inhabitants. On the other hand, of the animals characteristic of Australia — the marsupials and monotremes — only one representa¬ tion, the opossum, is now found outside the continent as a living species, and that in America. When we turn to fossil forms, we find that the New World is far more closely connected with Australia and Tasmania; and opinion is tending in the direction of the view that an antarctic continent with a mild climate united Australia with South America in early Tertiary times. Australia had its own invertebrate fauna already; but there came via Tasmania, which is richer in marsupial types, the vertebrates that are so characteristic of the Australian continent in our own day.

The peculiarity of the marsupials is that the young one is born in an imperfect state and then transferred to a pouch or bag of loose skin, in which it attaches itself to the nipple and completes its development. Even after it has attained sufficient growth to enable it to run about and forage for itself, the young marsupial still returns to the mother’s pouch for warmth and safety; and the female kangaroo, when hard pressed by the dogs, will sometimes sacrifice its young one to save its own life. The appearance of the kangaroo, the largest marsupial of Australia, is sufficiently well known to make a detailed description unnecessary. There are over fifty species of varying size, the largest, the Red Kangaroo, standing some 5 feet high and weighing 200 lbs.

The opossum of America must not be confused with the so-called opossum of Australia ; the latter is properly a phalanger ; some are as large as a hare, others as small as a dormouse. Allied to them are the flying opossums, the largest 3 feet in length. Other important marsupials are the wombat and the native cat.

When we turn from the mammals to the birds, we find far less of that isolation to which allusion has been made. Australia is indeed unrivalled in the variety and beauty of its birds ; but they are representatives of the same orders and families which we find on the other continents of the world. Two important groups, it may be noted, are absent — the vultures and the woodpeckers — and among the less important deficien¬ cies (from a non-culinary standpoint) may be mentioned the absence of pheasants.

To compensate for these lacunse Australia has developed certain families peculiar to itself and its neighbours, and these correspond largely to the peculi¬ arities of its flora. Australia is pre-eminently a land of flowers ; and soft, juicy fruits are conspicuously absent. Among the birds of Australia we find, there¬ fore, a large number of honey eaters — with brushtipped tongues and powerful feet, to enable them to cling to the flowers while they suck the honey.

Another remarkable bird is the brush turkey or mound maker, which forms a nest, or rather incubating heap of earth and decaying vegetable matter ; it never sits on its eggs. A mound has been measured which was 15 feet high and 60 feet in circumference. Other Australian birds are the laughing jackass, a species of kingfisher, many kinds of hawk and cockatoo ; and last, but not least, the emu, representative of the ostrich tribe. The extraordinary richness of bird life in Australia will be realised when it is stated that while Europe has 500 species, Australia has 630. North America, of vastly greater area and more varied climate, has only 720.

The reptiles of Australia are important from the standpoint of the present work, as supplying a large portion of the food of the natives. There are 140 species of lizard and nearly 70 species of snake ; the monitor lizard attains a size of 5 or 6 feet. Insects are likewise important, and in some parts of New South Wales millions of the Agrotis spina moth emerge annu¬ ally from the chrysalis, to form in the old days the staple food of gatherings of the aborigines for months

IO together ; in our own time they fall a prey to the flocks of crows which congregate as soon as the moth begins to appear.

Comparison of the Australian fauna and flora with the forms still subsisting or found as fossils in other parts of the world, enables us to fix approximately the geological period at which they must have found their way into Australia. In the case of man it is far otherwise. It has been mentioned above that the dingo was possibly introduced into Australia by man ; but it seems not impossible that it long antedated man’s appearance there ; for there is said to be evidence to show that the dingo was in Australia in Miocene times, an epoch long preceding the existence of man, so far as our present knowledge goes. As regards the antiquity of man, it is a remarkable fact that, although vast quantities of alluvium have been turned over in the course of mining operations during the last fifty years, the human race can hardly be said to have a geological history in Australia at all. Stone hatchets have been dug up at various depths, but we do not know how fast the overlying material was deposited. A few years ago the so-called Warnambool footprints caused some excitement, which has recently been revived ; at the end of 1890 a slab was dug from the limestone 54 feet from the surface, at a spot in the very centre of the bed and from the lower part of the limestone series. On it there are two broad, smooth depressions, one margin of each being pre¬ served ; they are separated by a ridge seven-eighths of an inch thick, and in front of them are two deep ii

imprints which might have been made by a pair of feet. Unfortunately the rock is very friable and all the original surface of the imprints has crumbled away, thus rendering the results of re-examination, even by the most distinguished authorities, of very doubtful value ; it is said that the imprints were filled with a thin clayey layer, as if the people who made them had had muddy feet. The local museum now contains these relics, and the label attached to them states that they are the traces of a man and woman who sat down side by side at a time when the stone was loose sand. One writer has been bold enough to say that the specimen proves man to have existed in Australia in Pliocene, that is, in late Tertiary times. The existence of Tertiary man has been maintained on other grounds, but not for Australia ; even there¬ fore were Tertiary man generally accepted, which he is not, it would need very strong proofs before we could admit that man was in Australia at a period when the human race, on the ordinary view, was only just becoming human and when its varieties were as yet unknown. But quite apart from the fact that Professor Gregory sees no evidence that the rock is of Pliocene age, it is far from self-evident that the imprints are human at all.

Supposing, however, that they are human, it by no means follows that they are as old as Pliocene times. Indeed, Professor Gregory holds that if they are foot¬ prints they were made, not by naked, but by booted feet ! More important as evidence of man’s antiquity is a find of stone axes at Shea’s Creek, near Sydney, in

1896. They were at a depth of n feet below waterlevel, and associated with bones of the dugong, which bore cuts and scratches such as would be made by blows of a stone axe. This is good evidence, but Dr. Howitt, a good authority, tells us that the date of the deposit is uncertain, and so far from being Tertiary, it is uncertain whether the remains are even of the Quaternary period.

It is possible that more evidence may be brought together, or that facts may come to light from other parts of Australia, which will help us to date man’s appearance in the continent. At present there seems to be no evidence from either Queensland or Victoria that man has a geological history in Australia, and from New South Wales the evidence is, as we have seen, uncertain. As regards Victoria the question has recently been discussed by Professor Gregory, and he comes to the surprising conclusion that man pene¬ trated into Victoria only some three hundred years ago. There are many facts which bear out this con¬ clusion, and a consideration of the aboriginal legends seems to support it.

In order to make clear why this conclusion was unexpected, it will be necessary to deal at this point with the theories as to the origin of the Australians. There are two kinds of evidence on which it is possible to base fairly reliable conclusions ; these are, firstly, language, and, secondly, physical characters. As regards the first, it is a lamentable fact that our know¬ ledge of Australian philology is of the smallest ; we have at present virtually no data on which to go, in forming i3 a hypothesis as to the relations of Australian tongues with other families. As to the physical characters we know more ; the facts will be set forth in the next chapter. But our knowledge is hardly definite enough to make conclusions more than eminently provisional.

In colour the Australian varies from coffee to almost pure black, if observers are to be trusted ; his head is usually long ; his hair bushy, but entirely different from that of the negro in being straight or at most curly. On the other hand, the Tasmanians, who, it must be remembered, were, for all practical purposes, a distinct race, had rounder heads and frizzly or woolly black hair and entirely black complexions. This woolly or frizzly character of the hair they share with the Papuans, neighbours of the Australians on the north, and the Melanesians, who lie to the east and north-east.

The most commonly accepted view of Australian origins is that put forward by Flower and Lyddekker, who hold that the original population was Melanesian in character, that is to say, that the Tasmanians represented the original inhabitants of Australia. In this connection it is interesting to note that there is a great similarity between the Tasmanians and another presumably early offshoot of the stock from which the Melanesians originated — the Andaman Islanders, as may be seen by consulting Mr. Ling Roth’s work on the Tasmanians. But, as we have seen, the Tas¬ manians are frizzly haired ; and hair character is very persistent. In order therefore to explain the straight hair of the average Australian, our authorities suppose that there was an immigration of ‘a low form of Caucasian Melanochroi/ that is to say, a people akin to the dark-skinned Dravidians of South India, distant cousins of the dark-skinned European races.

This immigration must have taken place, in all probability, after the separation of Tasmania from Australia ; indeed, Dr. Howitt’s views notwithstanding, it does not seem impossible that Tasmania was origin¬ ally peopled by water and not by land. On the other hand, it seems probable that Torres Straits were, at the time of this invasion, dry land, as was much of the area between Australia and the continent of Asia. A great stumbling-block in the way of this hypothesis is the fact, if we may so regard it, that in Victoria man has left, so far as we know, no traces which can by any possibility go back as far as to antedate the Caucasian immigration ; but whether the Tasmanians went by land or by sea, it seems probable that their starting-point was Victoria ; and we cannot see why, if they were in Victoria, they should have cleared out, bag and baggage, unless they were dispossessed by the invaders. It might, of course, be suggested that the Tasmanians came from South or West Australia ; and in fact the word for water at Cape Leeuwin is the same as that in one of the Tasmanian dialects. But this seems to be no more than one of those chance coincidences, which are especially probable in a language poor in consonants. In any case this hypothesis has to face the difficulty that at Cape Leeuwin, the supposed place of embarkation, canoes are not in use at the present day ; yet we cannot suppose that the whole Negrito population of West Australia was either wiped out, leaving not a trace of its culture behind, save a single word, or, in default of this, that the inhabitants migrated bodily in canoes into Tasmania. If, therefore, the late appearance of man in Victoria can be taken as proved, the origin of the Tasmanians is an unsolved problem, for the land connections alluded to when the marsupials were under discussion, were, of course, far older than the probable date of man’s appearance on the earth. For man was preceded by a long array of other mammalia, extinct or still subsisting; and if he reached Tasmania by land, so may and would they have done also.