Section G. 
oN ER: OP OuL O'Gsye 
President of the Section: Hon. John Forrest, C.M.G., M.L.C. 
1—ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 
By James BarnarD, Vice-President of the Royal Society of 
Tasmania. 
THE extinction of a race of people, however insignificant, is an 
event which cannot be contemplated without some degree of 
emotion, and must awaken in the mind a desire to trace out the 
cause of such a phenomenon. It cannot, therefore, but prove of 
interest to investigate the facts connected with the gradual 
dwindling down, and ultimate disappearance from the world, of 
any portion of the family of man. 
Such is the case of the aborigines of Tasmania—its former 
princes of wastes and lords of deserts—who have now ceased to 
exist as a distinct people; and therefore it is my purpose to 
rescue their memory from oblivion by collating from all available 
sources particulars of their life’s history from the cradle to the 
grave, and embodying the result of my researches in this memoir. 
But it must be understood that scarcely any knowledge of their 
condition prior to contact with the white man is attainable. 
Their past is wrapt in impenetrable obscurity, without any 
monument or historical record existing to tell of their origin and 
mode of life, save only some faint traditionary lore gathered from 
their lips by successive inquirers. 
It has become an axiom that, following the law of evolution 
and survival of the fittest, the inferior races of mankind must 
give place to the highest type of man, and that this law is 
adequate to account for the gradual decline in numbers of the 
aboriginal inhabitants of a country before the march of civilisa- 
tion. Whatever degree of force or truth there may be in this 
statement, it may be fairly admitted that partial amelioration in 
the condition of the original natives of a country has not exercised 
the benign influence upon their existence which might have been 
reasonably inferred. From previous habits and modes of life the 
indigenous inhabitants are not placed in harmony with their new 
surroundings physically or morally, and are consequently 
