PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. LXXXI 



at all events, very difficult to believe that there have been any 

 such definite migrations as those of the Kava and Betel nut people, 

 as suggested by Dr. Rivers, to account for certain aspects of 

 Melanesian culture. 



Dr. Rivers(^) has suggested that ^' The history of Australian 

 culture and its present nature )become far easier to understand if 

 there has been a gradual infiltration of seafaring peoples, starting 

 from many points on the coast; if immigrants, few in number, 

 first formed small settlements on the coast, and passed on their 

 culture to the interior of the continent by gradual secondary 

 movements." 



In connexion with the suggestion of small immigrant parties 

 landing at many points on the coast, there are two or three matters 

 that must be taken into consideration. In the first place, Australia 

 is a continent, and not a comparatively small island like those 

 forming the Melanesian or Polynesian groups. There can be little 

 doubt but that the second and main immigration was on, at least, 

 a very considerable scale, large enough to allow the immigrants to 

 populate, as they certainly did, the whole Continent, as is proved 

 by the fact that the fundamental features of the complicated social 

 organization are practically identical everywhere; once developed, 

 no subsequent immigration, if such has taken place, has apparently 

 affected them. 



It seems probable that the entrance into Australia of the second 

 migration took place in early Pleistocene times, and it is im- 

 portant to note that in succeeding years the hot arid zone gradually 

 crept further and further northwards. This hot arid zone included 

 the northern parts of Australia, and extended across into Papua. 

 The northern littoral of Australia would then have a climate more 

 or less similar to that of Central Australia at the present day. 

 Nothing strikes the traveller in the Northern Territory, right up 

 from the Tropic of Capricorn to Darwin, more than the absence 

 of tropical vegetation. On the eastern coast of Queensland, in 

 parts, there are rich scrubs where the remnants of a flora, and, to 

 a small extent, of a fauna reminiscent of Papua exist. In the 

 very centre of the Continent there is, in the Macdonnell Eanges, 

 entirely isolated and surrounded by tracts of dry arid country 

 spreading over endless distances, just one gorge, 2 miles at most 

 in length, where a small colony of palm trees gives a hint of a 

 past climate very different from that of the present. For the 

 most part, the one striking feature of jSTorthern Australia is the 

 almost entire absence of anything like a luxuriant tropic vegeta- 

 tion or any abundance of animal life. 



(') Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, B.A.A.S. Report, 1914, page 530. 



