PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 575 



Lydekker, in 1898, abandoned the two-race theory, and reached 

 the same conclusion as Wallace. Most anthropologists now accept the 

 one-race theory. The most recent writer on this subject is Professor 

 Oregory, who, in The Dead Heart of Australia, p. 176, says he accepts 

 this view and abandons the position he took up in 1903 in The Geography 

 of Victoria. 



This view certainly enhances the interest in the aboriginal, and 

 brings the subject of the ethnology and anthropology of the black 

 nearer home to us. Some writers give the Australian even greater 

 importance. Stratz has taken him as a central luiit, a protot>'pe, 

 around which he groups all the rest of the races of men ; and another 

 writer, Schoetensack, holds that all the races of men were evolved in 

 the Australian continent. 



To touch upon the evidence for these theories would lead us into 

 such subjects as language and folk-lore, customs, tools, weapons, 

 religious ideas, &c. Such a digression is beyond my purpose. The 

 scope of this communication does not embrace the origin or affinities 

 ■of man ; therefore do not expect any extensive statement of facts or 

 theories on the subject. I have said something recently and elsewhere 

 on certain points of aboriginal anthropology and customs. 



I would refer here to only one thing more, viz., the character of the 

 aboriginal. People have been so long accustomed to hear him spoken 

 of as the lowest type of race that they have interpreted this to mean 

 that he is the essence of ever^^hing that is bad. We could overlook 

 accounts of the " Indians " of this country or the " natives of New 

 Holland," as they were termed a hundred years ago or more ; but 

 recent descriptions of an equally untrue and absurd character are 

 spread by people who should know better. We read of mental degrada- 

 tion, the zero of all anthropological analysis, the lowest of savages, no 

 natural affections, live burial of children, wooing by club inducements, 

 the lowest races in the scale of humanity, untrainable savages, cruel, 

 ungrateful. I cannot close this paper without saying that I am sure 

 that you who know the aboriginals have found them, as I have, fond 

 of their children, kind to the aged and infirm, generous, grateful, apt 

 to learn, good at mechanical work, equal in ability to white school 

 children with whom they are educated, of unimpeachable honesty in 

 things entrusted to them, cheerful under difficulties, of unruffled good 

 temper — even in free, romping fights, and sometimes displaying re- 

 markable shrewdness and a keen sense of the humorous or the ridiculous, 

 I am not sure whether football is a recognised test of civilisation ; but 

 if cricket is any criterion the blackfellow has a strong claim to be civilis- 

 able. There are exceptions : of course there are. You find some 

 aboriginals with bad mental traits, just as you find some miserably-fed 

 individuals or groups among " pieces of anatomy " that are the finest, 

 the supplest, the most lithesome, and of the best carriage in the whole 

 range of creation. I think Mrs. Gunn, in The Little Black Princess, 

 has given a truer picture of the Australian aboriginal than is to be 

 found in the latest half dozen books professing to deal scientifically 

 A\'ith the subject. 



