10 Richard J. A. Berry: 



Australian Continent, for the former, and a very lonpr period of 

 at least prehistoric time for the lartter." 



As examples of scientific evidence the foregoing extracts count 

 for little, but as examples of close scientific reasoning from the 

 known to the unknown they count, or should count, for much, 

 and it seems to me that an antiquity, a great antiquity, must 

 be allowed the now extinct Tasmanian race, for there is no ques- 

 tion that the more one examines the problems attaching to the 

 Tasmanian, the more the opinion forces itself upon one's atten- 

 tion. 



Concerning the second of these debatable points — " With 

 what race is the Tasmanian must closely allied?" the consensus 

 of opinion appears to be in favour of regarding the Tasmanians 

 as quite distinct from their neighbours of the adjacent Austra- 

 lian mainland, and, second, of allying them to the much more 

 distant Papuans of New Guinea, or, rather, to the primitive 

 stock from which that people may have been derived. 



As regards the first point, and, incidentally, the second also, 

 Mr. Protector Parker, quoted by Bonwick (5), says: — 



■' It is one of the many strange anomalies of Australian geo- 

 graphy that a branch of this Papuan race should have been found 

 in Australia (i.e., Tasmania), whose woolly hair and blacker com- 

 plexion clearly dir^tinguish them from the Continental Austra- 

 lian, and yet that no branch of the same family should be found 

 on the shores of the mainland nearest the presumed locality 

 where the race originated.' 



Gaa-son, who contributed the osteological chapters to Roth's 

 work on the Tasmanian aborigines (12), says: — 



'■ The race to which the Tasmanians might naturally be 

 thought most allied from their geographical position is the Aus- 

 tralian, but many points in the physical characters of the two 

 races are so totally unlike as to render this relationship pro- 

 blemartical." 



Topinard, the great French anthropologist (15), stated that the 

 skulls of Australians and Tasmanians examined by him differed 

 considerably, and he gave it as his opinion tliat these two peoples 

 were distinct races. 



Huxley (16) points out tluut the type of Australian man is 

 quite distinct from that of the Tasmanian. 



