5 o8 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



white man's bullet," and in 1877, with the death of Truganini, 

 the last survivor, the race became extinct. 



It is a sad story, and we can only hope that the replace- 

 ment of a people with a cranial capacity of about 1,200 c.c. 

 by one with a capacity one-third greater may prove ultimately 

 of advantage in the evolution of mankind. 



The world certainly needs all the brains it can get : at 

 the same time it is not very flattering to our own powers of 

 intelligence to find that we allowed this supremely interesting 

 people, the last representatives of one of the earliest stages 

 of human culture, to perish without having meanwhile ascer- 

 tained all that could be known about it. What we do know 

 is very little indeed ; a book of about three hundred pages 

 contains almost every scrap of trustworthy information. 1 



If any other nation had shown the same disregard for a 

 human document of such priceless value, we should be inclined 

 to discredit its civilisation. Even now, in this twentieth cen- 

 tury, it cannot be said that the British Government takes 

 such an intelligent interest in the numerous primitive peoples 

 which it has taken into its charge as we have a right to 

 expect, at least from a State having any regard for the advance- 

 ment of learning. 



The first to call attention to the resemblance between the 

 stone implements of the Tasmanians and those of palaeolithic 

 man was Prof. E. B. Tylor. 2 Subsequently Mr. R. M. Johnston 3 

 compared them with the "eoliths" figured by Ribiero already 

 alluded to (Science Progress, 1908, p. 348). Prof. Tylor 4 has 

 repeatedly returned to the subject ; and in 1905 exhibited 

 specimens before the Archaeological Institute, when he made 

 the following statement : " I am now able to select and exhibit 

 to the Institute from among the flint implements and flakes from 

 the cave of Le Moustier, in Dordogne, specimens corresponding 

 in make with such curious exactness to those of the Tasmanian 



1 H. Ling Roth, The Aborigines of Tasmania, Halifax, England, 1899. 



2 E. B. Tylor, The Early History of Mankind, London, 1865, p. 195. 



3 R. M. Johnston, Systematic Account of the Geology of Tasmania, 1888, p. 334. 



4 E. B. Tylor in Preface to H. Ling Roth, The Aborigines of Tasmania, 1st 

 Edition, 1890 ; 2nd Edition, 1899. On the Tasmanians as Representatives of 

 Palaeolithic Man, foam. Anthr. Inst. 1893, xxiii. pp. 141-152, 2 pis. On the 

 Survival of Palaeolithic Conditions in Australia and Tasmania, fourn. Anthr. 

 Inst. 1898, xxviii. p. 199. On Stone Implements from Tasmania, fourn. Anthr. 

 Inst. 1900, xxx. p. 257. 



