PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. '» 



that would inevitably have destroyed all animal and vegetable 

 life. Botanists would have been saved from a great deal of labour 

 and uncertainty, in classifying the " gums," if parts of the region 

 with which we are dealing had been submerged, so as to break 

 the chain of variation, and by that means convert what now seem 

 to be mere varieties into what would then be naturally considered 

 distinct species. 



It seems to me that the Eucalypti and kindred species of 

 Myrtacece alone, without taking the Leguminosce, the Proteacece, 

 and other orders into account, conclusively prove Australia to be 

 immensely old. 



The origin of the Australia)) aborigines is as yet, and probably 

 will be for ever, entirely unknown. Whether the ancestors of the 

 present fast disappearing race arrived originally from Asia, Africa, 

 or America, and whether immediately or mediately through some 

 of the South Sea islands, it is not surprising that the barren inhospit- 

 able nature of their new home, unameliorated by the slightest 

 attempt at cultivation, should have completed their degradation 

 to almost the very lowest plane of humanity. Notwithstanding 

 the vast space to be covered, they gradually spread themselves 

 sparsely over the whole of the island, the faculties necessary for 

 the prolongation of their miserable existence having been suffi- 

 ciently sharpened by the necessities of the case. 



The spread of these people over such a tract of three millions 

 of square miles, a great part of which was an inhospitable desert, 

 the development of scores of languages, comprising the most 

 extraordinary inflections and complications, and the institution 

 of so many barbarous rites and revolting customs, must 

 have occupied an immense period, the length of which, in 

 the entire absence of records and traditions, cannot even be 

 guessed at. 



Until the arrival of the white man, they were still in the stone 

 age, and this fact alone carries them back many thousands of 

 years (which, however, is a very short time when compared with 

 geological epochs) and evidences the entire stagnation of civiliza- 



