Antiquity of Man in Victoria. 141 



Mr. J. Parker tells me that the aborigines of the station on 

 Mount Franklin had a legend that their ancestors entered Aus- 

 tralia in a canoe, and that they travelled into Victoria from the 

 west. Mr. Parker says that his father concluded that, according 

 to the legends, the aborigines only arrived here 300 years before 

 the British occupation. This evidence alone would not be worth 

 much ; but so far as I know, all the direct available evidence 

 agrees with it. The oldest bed in which stone implements have 

 been found need not be more than a few centuries old. The 

 evidence is overwhelming that the implements occur only in the 

 superficial layers or in beds such as river silts and sand dunes, 

 which may accumulate with extreme rapidity. 



Mr. Robert Etheridge has di.scussed the evidence of the age of 

 man in New South Wales, and has concluded that the antiquity 

 of man in that State also is unproven.^ 



Tlie negative evidence is equally striking in reference to 

 Queensland. Mr. Etheridge asks " Has man a geological history 

 in Queensland?" and says "that answer to this question may be 

 given in one word — No ! That is to say, so far as I am aware, 

 no evidence of the presence of man, or of his works, has yet been 

 discovered in any raised beach, cave or stratified deposit associated 

 with the remains of extinct animals."'^ 



The late Professor Tate, of South Australia, believed in the 

 Pliocene age of Australian man ; but his belief rested only on the 

 doubtful assumption that man necessarily entered at the same 

 date as the dingo. 



The general evidence seems to me to point to the conclusion 

 that the aborigines have resided in Victoria for but a short 

 period. . It is true that the division of the Victorian aborigines 

 into so many distinct tribes at first suggests their long residence 

 in the country, but this would only be so if the tribes had 

 developed here. The aborigines, however, were divided into 



1 Etheridg-e, R., Jan.: " Has Man a Geological History in Australia?" Proe. Linn. Soc. 

 N.S.W., 1890, vol. V. (finA ser.), Sydney, 1891, p. 259-266. Also "Contributions to a Cata- 

 logue of Works, Reports and Papers on the Anthropology, Ethnology and Geological His- 

 tory of the Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines." Dep. Mines. Mem. Geol. Surv. N.S.W., 

 Palaeontology, No. 8, Pt. I., Sydney, 1890, p. 3. Full references to the literature of Abori- 

 ginal Stone Implements and Ovens will be found in this catalogue, of which Pt. II. was 

 issued in 1891, and Pt. III. in 1895. 



2 Jack and Etheridge : " Geology of yueensland," vol. i., 1892, p. 622. 



