446 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



capable of working, but, the mother being the black parent, the 

 moral tendencies lean towards the native on account of pre-natal 

 influences. Also, the child, being brought up among an indolent, 

 lazy people, contracts these habits. Physically, the white race 

 strongly asserts itself. The white colour overpowers the black,^ 

 except in isolated cases. 



The complete segregation of the natives, with ample hunting 

 grounds, would bring the desirable conditions under which the 

 blacks should live. This should be well considered among other 

 questions in the Northern Territory, where the blacks still form 

 a big percentable of the population. A sojourn of a few years 

 among the remnant of our Victorian blacks teaches us that they 

 respond to good moral training, if they are protected from outside 

 influences, for our blacks have only reached the childhood stage,, 

 and, like children, they need guarding and protecting. 



Had it been possible to have given this question more scientific 

 thought and care in the early days of settlement in Victoria there 

 would probably be more than a remnant left to-day of the Victorian, 

 aboriginal race. 



NOTES ON THE CAPE BARREN ISLANDERS. 



By L. W . G. Biichner, F.li.A.I., Government Research Scholar 



in the Department of Anthropology, University of Melbourne. 



[abstract.] 

 In November, 1912, the author was a member of a scientific 

 expedition to the islands in the Furneaux Group, Bass Strait. A 

 study of the origin of the islanders on Cape Barren Island is very 

 interesting. In 1773, Captain Tobias Furneaux, a colleague of 

 Captain Cook, attempted to determine whether there was a strait 

 separating Van Dieman's Land and New Holland. He reported 

 that there was " nothing but shoals and islands." For nearly 

 25 years after, nothing was done in regard to the exploration of 

 this locality. In 1797, Bass set out in his whaleboat, w^ith eight 

 others, to solve this problem. In a trip made to rescue the crew 

 of the wrecked Sydney Cove, Flinders discovered the presence of 

 seals on Preservation Island. Acting on the reports of 

 Flinders, when he returned to Sydney, a small sealer, 

 the Nautilus, set sail with the next Flinders-Bass expe- 

 dition, to the Straits Islands. From this time on 

 the sealing industry rapidly grew, attracting all classes of 

 adventurers from different places. Of these Straitsmen, several 

 were runaway convicts, both from Port Jackson and Van Dieman's 

 Land. Those Straitsmen made periodical raids on the Tasmanian 

 mainland, and carried off the native women. In some cases they 

 were taken by brute force, in others they were purchased from 



