PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS IN SECTION G. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
By tHE Hon. JOHN FORRES'', C.M.G., M.L.C. 
Ir seems to me that a few words on the condition of the 
Australian aboriginal race will fittingly open our proceedings 
on this important occasion, and if the very few words I have to 
say will lead to some greater interest being taken in their 
customs, manners and traditions, I will be greatly pleased. 
The condition of the Australian aboriginal race when the 
civilisation of the Old World was introduced to their island 
continent is one of the most interesting subjects that can occupy 
the thoughts of those who contemplate the history of the human 
family scattered throughout the world. 
There is no doubt but that Australia has been peopled for a 
considerable time, and it is also certain that its original people 
are much lower in the human order than any of their neigbours. 
These facts being admitted, it becomes interesting to speculate 
as to the causes which have acted upon these people and have led 
them to follow the nomadic life in which they were found and in 
which they now exist. 
To find a people without any idea of cultivating the soil, 
without any permanent dwellings, in many places without any 
clothing, without any means of cooking, other than by roasting 
in the ashes—and without any villages—was certainly an 
extraordinary discovery, and must have astonished and puzzled 
the early explorers of Australia. Dampier, who visited the 
north-west coast of Australia in 1688 expresses his surprise 
and disgust in these words:—‘“The inhabitants of this 
country are the miserablest people in the world—the 
Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope, though a nasty people, 
yet for wealth are gentlemen to these, who have no houses and 
skin garments, sheep, poultry and fruits of the earth, ostrich 
eggs, &c., as the Hottentots have; and, setting aside their 
human shape, they differ but little from brutes—they have no 
houses, but lie in the open air without any covering, the earth 
being their bed and the heaven their canopy.” 
One might have reasonably expected that in an immense 
continent the people of the different portions might have been 
found to differ largely in their customs and manners, and in 
