VI 



ELECTION OF FELLOWS. 

 Mr. James Pillinger was elected a Fellow of the Society. 



NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



Mr. Hall laid on the table a paper comprising a comprehen- 

 •sive and detailed description of the Moa bones in the Tasmanian 

 Museum, which had been drawn up by Mr. H. H. Scott, a 

 Fellow^ of the vSociety, for presentation to the Museum. The 

 Chairman said that it Vvas a curious coincidence that the only 

 two gigantic three-toed birds of the family Struthonidoe — the 

 Moa of New Zealand and the Dodo of Maurititus — both of them 

 historically recent — had become extinct. Professor Owen saw 

 at The Hague a picture painted soon after the Dutch acquired 

 the island of Mauritius in which was a 'figure of the Dodo, evi- 

 dently drawn from life. The Moa is supposed to have become 

 extinct soon after the occupation of New Zealand by the Maoris, 



Mr. Flenry Flolt exhibited specimens of internal parasites of 

 domestic animals, including the Ascaris of the pig, the liver- 

 fluke (Distoma hepatica) of the sheep, and specimens of Hae- 

 matopmus from the pig and calf. 



THE FOLLOWING PAPER WAS READ : 



The Food of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Bv Fritz Noctling, 

 M.A., Ph.D., etc. 



Trie paper refers to the evidence of other authorities, includ- 

 ing Ling Roth and the authors quoted by him,, dealing generally 

 with the question of animal and vegetable food. The author 

 then, proceeds to discuss the evidence of the vocabulary, describ- 

 ing in great detail the animals with which the aborigines were 

 familiar and used for food, and passing on to their vegetable 

 diet. He notes the great deficiency of carbo-hydrates in their 

 food, and concludes that the excessive protein diet must have 

 made them liable to disease, and probably accounted for the 

 sluggishness of their brains. 



]\Ir. Hall said that though the Pccten or comilion scallop 

 was supposed not to be eaten by the aborigines, its shell had 

 been found by Mr. May in their shell heaps. 



Mr. A. O. Green said that he did not think the large fungus 

 known as the native bread was ever eaten by the natives. 



The Chairman said that in his early days in Tasmania he 

 was often told by old settlers that the aborigines used to seek 

 the Mylitta, or " native bread," for food, and pointed out the 

 peculiar signs near the trunk of a dead tree which indicated its 

 presence underground. When freciuenting a rocky sea coast in 

 the winter months they subsisted largely on the Haliotis. The 

 debris in a cave at Rocky Cape which he had excavated to the 

 depth of several feet consisted almost entirely of the remains of 

 Haliotis shells. Dr. Noetling's researches in the question of the 

 food of the aborigines had gone far beyond those of any pre- 

 vious writer on the subject. 



