LXXX PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



nearer to the anthropoid ape, or the common ancestor, than did the 

 Tasmanian." Fortunately, we know quite enough of the culture 

 of the Tasmanians to prove, without the shadow of a doubt, that 

 their culture stage was not only at a decidedly, but at a vastly 

 lower, level than that of the Australians, their successors on the 

 mainland. To take their stone implements only, there is precisely 

 the same difference between these and those of the Australians as 

 there is between those of the lowest Mousterian and of the Cro- 

 magnon — the highest of prehistoric men. These tables show how 

 dangerous and entirely misleading it would be to rely, except 

 in a very general way, on skull measurements only as a guide to 

 cultural level or mental capacity amongst either living or extinct 

 races. 



No theoi'y yet proposed of a cross 'between two peoples — one 

 resident in Australia, the other an immigrant — takes into account 

 the undoubted fact that, if two races are at a decidedly different 

 level of culture, as most certainly were the primitive indigenes and 

 those who next reached Australia, it is extremely improbable that 

 there would be any amalgamation on equal terms. The weaker 

 and less cultured Avould certainly be exterminated by the stronger 

 and more highly cultured. On the theory, as advocated by Mr. 

 Mathew,(^) of the amalgamation of a lighter with a darker 

 people, based on the supposition that in certain tribes the 

 " phratry " names m'ay be interpreted respectively as eaglehawk 

 and crow, or black cockatoo and white cockatoo, the dark ibird 

 indicating the original ulotrichous strain, it is somewhat difficult to 

 understand the fact that the present Australians are uniformly 

 of the same dolour, and that they never possess true woolly hair, 

 one of the moet striking features of the Tasmanian. 



It looks, indeed, as if there had been a repetition of what 

 occurred in Europe when the Neanderthals were either forced out 

 or exterminated by the Cromagnons of Aurignacean times. Pro- 

 fessor H. F. Osborn says, " no evidence has thus far been found 

 that even the Neanderthal women were spared or allowed to 

 remain in the country, because in none of the burials of Aurig- 

 nacian times is there any evidence of the crossing or admixture 

 of the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals."^^) Exactly the same 

 may be said of the primitive inhabitants of Australia and of tlie 

 later immigrants, who may quite probably have been associated in 

 their origin with the Cromagnon race that was probably developed 

 in Asia, and thence swept westward into Europe, and possibly 

 eastward, and finally southward into Australia. 



It is a very difficult problem to decide as to whether there was 

 or was not any immigration subsequent to this second one. It is, 



(') Rev. ,T. Mathew, " Eaglehawk and Crow." 



(*) Osborn. " Men of the Old Stone Age," page 272. 



