BY R. J. TILLYARD. 767 



Dr. Fritz Noetling* (1910) argues ably, from his knowledge of the 

 very low state of civilisation of the Tasmanian aboriginals, that 

 they could not possibly have reached the island in canoes, but must 

 have crossed over on dry land. The date of submergence of the 

 Isthmus must, therefore, have been recent enough to allow of the 

 passage of man across it beforehand, though the crossing of later 

 arrivals (the Australian aboriginals and the dingo) was prevented. 

 He gives the following approximate dates, which can be only re- 

 garded as purely hypothetical: — 



Last Glacial Epoch. — 60,000 years ago. 



Post-Glacial Epoch. — Existence of a broad Isthmus 50,000 years 

 ago. Submergence began 10,000 years ago, about the time that the 

 gigantic Marsupials disappeared. 



Prehistoric Epoch. — Submergence still going on, 7,000 years 

 ago; Tasmanian aborigines arrived. Formation of Bass Straits 

 completed about 5,000 years ago; the dingo reached Australia. 



The discovery of the remains of the giant Diprotodon in Tas- 

 mania, and the strong evidence in favour of the dingo having been 

 brought to Australia in a semidomestic condition by the Aus- 

 tralian aborigines, make it evident that Professor Baldwin Spen- 

 cer was placing the limit too far back, when he argued for the 

 complete isolation of Tasmania since the close of the Tertiary 

 period. On the other hand, recent discoveries -of prehistoric man 

 in Europe make it appear extremely probable that the time of 

 man's past existence on the earth can be considerably lengthened. 

 And since the Tasmanian aborigines are recognised as having been 

 as low in the scale of civilisation, as any of the recently discovered 

 prehistoric men in Europe, there is no need to accept such exceed- 

 ingly close limits as Dr. Noetling would place on the time of final 

 submergence of the Isthmus. The Diprotodon, too, was almost cer- 

 tainly pre-Glacial, and its existence in Tasmania does not, there- 

 fore, offer any evidence in support of Dr. Noetling's dates. 



For the purposes of this paper, it will not be necessary to fix 

 the geologic time at which the change took place. I propose simply 



•Papers and Proc. Roy. Soc. Tasmania, 1910, p.261. 



