10 presidknt's address. 



tion among them, if it is permissible to use sucli a word in con- 

 nection with the state in which they existed. 



It seems probable that the ancestors of the present aboriginal 

 race were not the first human inhabitants of Australia, and that 

 their predecessors were the ancestors of the lately extinct Tas- 

 manian race. The Tasmanians, although resembling the Aus- 

 tralians in colour, in their not constructing permanent dwellings, 

 in their absolute nakedness, in the use of stone implements, 

 wooden spears and waddies, and in other particulars, were 

 evidently of another and an inferior race, for they had woolly 

 hair, and were ignorant of the boomerang, the wommera and the 

 tomahawk; and, there being no Dingoes in their island, they did 

 not possess any pets until the introduction of dogs by the white 

 man; while the shields and canoes which they used, if any, were 

 of very inferior character. 



Although there is no evidence of the fact, it seems likely that, 

 when the Australians arrived, they found the Tasmanians in 

 possession, and being a stronger and more domineering race they, 

 in course of time, drove the latter gradually further south, as the 

 Maori in New Zealand is supposed to have driven the Moriori to 

 Stewart Island; but the Australians did not care to follow the 

 Tasmanians across the Straits and extirpate them after the 

 manner of the Maori. 



It was for a long time supposed that the Dingo, being the only 

 placental in Australia except a few bats and rodents, was intro- 

 duced by man, and this supposition was hardly questioned until 

 the bones of this animal were found under a considerable depth 

 of volcanic ashes, in a fossil state in conjunction with those of the 

 Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilux ursinus), Thylacoleo, the gigantic 

 extinct kangaroos, (Macropus titan und M. atlas), and of the genera 

 Xototherium, Procoptodon and Diprotodon; from which fact it 

 was argued that the dog was indigenous, and must have been here 

 before man. 



But the existence of only one placental, in an island where 

 every other animal was marsupial, seems an anomaly only to be 

 accounted for on the assumption that, after Australia with all 



