82 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



of the native race is as much a mystery to us as ever. So 

 far as we positively know, it is quite as likely that it was 

 contemporary, in a general sense, with the Cave Men of 

 Europe as that it resulted from a migratory wave of much 

 later date, which threw it ashore under conceival^le, but 

 not very probable, circumstances. Balanced in this uncer- 

 tainty we have not ceased to cherish the hope that a fortu- 

 nate accident would at length remove it by uncovering some 

 sign of an older stratum of humanity beneath our feet, and 

 by the same token held ourselves prepared to scrutinize with 

 as much impartiality as caution any claim in its behalf made 

 upon our judgment. In presence of a fossil which has been 

 most kindly entrusted to the writer by its first inquisitors, the 

 Hon. R. T. Vale, M.P., chairman of the Local Board of the 

 Buninyong Mining Company, Ballarat, and Mr. T. S. Hart, 

 M.A., of the Ballarat School of Mines, it would now really seem 

 to him that such evidence is forthcoming, notwithstanding the 

 antecedent improbability established in his mind by failure to 

 find a trace of man heretofore among relics of ancient life. At 

 first sight the fossil appears to have been intentionally shaped to 

 adapt it to some instrumental use. It may, then, be convenient 

 to confirm this first impression by pointing out the marks of 

 human workmanship which it has, with more loss certainty, pre- 

 served to us. It consists of part of the distal half of a right 

 rib, the seventh or eighth, of an animal so large that it could 

 only have been one of the greater Nototheres, in all probability 

 Nototherium viitchelli, Owen. It is perfectly mineralized in the 

 usual manner, difiering in no wise in texture and colour from 

 well preserved contemporary fossils found elsewhere. Fortu- 

 nately it is accompanied by a portion of the head of the same 

 rib ; in conjunction with which it corresponds in all essential 

 features with a rib of Nototherium niitcheili among Queensland 

 remains of that species. The length of the fragnient is 154 mm,; 

 by the loss of its central edge, which has been split off, its 

 greatest breadth has been reduced to 42 mm. On its posterior 

 aspect (Fig. 1), there is at {a) an obvious flattening of the upper 

 part of the blade, the surface of the bone for a length of 65 mm. 

 having been removed to an appreciable depth, and apparently by 

 some mode of abrasion ; near the distal end of the split edge on 



