OCCASIONAL NOTES. 



No. I. 



Antiqcity of Man in Australia. 



In 1890 there appeared a short paper by myself, " Has 

 Man a Geological History in Australia ?"i being an analysis 

 of the statements relative to the supposed discovery of human 

 teeth in the Wellington Cave bone-deposits by Mr. Gerard 

 Krefft. That teeth were found appeared to be an established 

 fact, but that these were taken from the bona-fide bone- 

 breccia did not then appear to be satisfactorily decided, 

 hence the conclusion of "not pi-oven " arrived at. 



Two other points, however, were unknown to ine at the 

 time I wrote. The first was that Krefft had figured one of 

 the molar teeth, and the second that at the time of his 

 severance from the Museum, or thereabouts, he had a work in 

 preparation on our Post-Tertiary Mammals, which apparently 

 was to be called " Australian Fossil Remains." 



In 1882 there appeared in the published " Votes and 

 Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly " a parliamentary 

 paper, " Exploration of the Caves and Rivers of New South 

 Wales, "2 to which were attached a number of plates of 

 Wellington Cave fossils ; some of these were photographic 

 reproductions (thirteen plates), the remainder lithographs, 

 numbered Plates 1 to 18. Figs. 3 and 4 of PI. 12 are two 

 views of a human molar tooth. 



The explanations of these lithographic plates, accompanied 

 by a number of disjointed notes, are amongst the KrelTt MSS. 

 now preserved in the Mitchell Librai'y. With the view of 

 endeavouring to recognise as many as possible of the original 

 specimens in the Museum Collection, Mr. W. W. Thorpe 

 spent some days at the Library, and through the courtesy of 

 Mr. H. Wright, the Librarian, was able to transcribe copious 

 extracts. The two most important points revealed were 

 the following: — In the explanation of Plate 1 2, we read in 

 Krefft's own handwriting — " Figs, 3 and 4. Side view, natural 

 size, and view from above enlarged of a human molar tooth, 

 taken from the solid breccia of Wellington Cave by the ^oriter.'"^ 



1 Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S. Wales, v., pt. 2., 1890, p. 259. 



- Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, Sydney, v., 1882, 

 p.p. 551-602. 



3 The italics are mine. 



