262 HAS MAN A GEOLOGICAL HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA? 



process of gold-prospecting twenty-two inches below the surface, 

 in a place which evidently had never been before disturbed."* 



The gathering of Post-Tertiary deposits is of so variable a 

 nature that the deductions of relative age, of any value, except 

 under peculiar circumstances, cannot be drawn from their physical 

 features. Indeed this line of argument has been adopted by the 

 Eev. Peter MacPherson, who, when dealing with the antiquity of 

 aboriginal stone hatchets, selected the Hunter River alluvium for 

 one of his illustrations, showing how easily and quickly it is 

 possible for detrital matter to entomb articles of human work- 

 manship, f 



We now come to what would at first sight appear to be the 

 most reliable evidence of the geological antiquity of Australian 

 man, but after a careful weighing of the facts, I do not feel 

 justified in attaching to it that amount of importance which the 

 discovery would seem to warrant. I refer to the important 

 statement by the late Gerard Krefft, which he published on at 

 least two occasions, of the occurrence of a human tooth in the 

 Wellington Cave breccia. 



I need not dilate on the importance of such a find, if its sur- 

 roundings can be satisfactorily established. If the tooth, which 

 I am now permitted to exhibit by permission of the Curator of 

 the Australian Museum, was found in the well-known red bone- 

 earth or breccia associated with any of the mammals of that 

 period now extinct, it certainly would lend strong colour to the 

 existence of man on this Continent in Post-Tertiary times. To 

 prove this the evidence must be conclusive, not partial ; and I 

 regret to say there is just a sufiicient want of corroborative 

 evidence, Mr. Krefi't's statement notwithstanding, to neutralise 

 the importance of the discovery. 



The facts of the case, such as they are, are as follows : — The 

 late Curator of tlie Australian Museum, in giving a list of the 



* •' Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians," 1870, p. 215. 

 + Journ. R. Soc. N. S. Wales for 1885 [1886], xix. p. 117. 



