THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 223 



Another deposit along the shore at about high tide calls for a 

 brief comment. This is a peaty and coal-like deposit to be seen at 

 the foot of the dunes north of the moulh of the Derby River. 

 In some places this carbonaceous accumulation is covered with 

 sand, but a layer from 4 to 6 inches thick is often visible, and 

 this appears to me to be nothing more than a preservation of 

 accumulations of seaweed into a form of peat. 



Ethnology. — By A. S. Kenyon, C.E. 



Any expectations of interesting discoveries in the anthro- 

 pological line were destined to be disappointed. The remains — 

 kitchen middens and stone implements — present the usual 

 features of any part of the Victorian coast line in their kind and 

 occurrence. The only part of the Victorian coast presenting 

 unusual features is at Cape Otway, where the physical conditions 

 favour a certain amount of isolation. No such conditions are 

 present at the Promontory. The tribes making Shallow Inlet, 

 where large middens occur, their rendezvous, worked naturally 

 and easily along the isthmus to the Derby River and the range. 

 Food is plentiful — molluscan, mammalian, or vegetarian — the whole 

 way, while fresh water occurs frequently in swamps and soaks. 

 At each point of shelter adjacent to rocks large shell-mounds 

 occur, containing the usual varieties of shells, a few bones of 

 birds and animals, quartz and flint chips and flakes, and broken 

 stone implements of various sorts — axes (polished and chipped), 

 hammers, grinding stones, &c. No human bones were met with. 

 One bone implement was found. On the Promontory itself, 

 considered apart from the isthmus, the same remarks apply. 

 Progression from bay to bay through the comparatively open 

 timbered country was easy. The middens of Oberon Bay show 

 distinct evidence, by the variety of implements found, of tribal 

 camps — that is, women as well as men penetrated so far. In the 

 bush country itself little evidence was to be found. The granites 

 in disintegrating provide such a plentiful supply of crystalline 

 quartz in all sizes and shapes that there was no need for the 

 aboriginal to carry foreign stones with him to strike flakes off for 

 his knives, &c. 



Although much recent formations exist, both as dunes and as 

 dune rocks, and, although they are much denuded and exposed, 

 no trace of any different and inferior race to the one we know 

 was to be found. The remains discovered were all on the surface 

 of such comparatively recent formations as to lead to the suspicion 

 that the natives did not get on to the Promontory until very little 

 before ourselves. Much interesting work in this regard remains 

 to be done, both on the Promontory and in particular in the 

 island chain representing all that is left of the old Tasmanian 

 land-bridge. 



