724 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F, 
have been driven by storms from the coast of Africa, and thus 
reached New Holland or Van Diemen’s Land, or to negroes either 
escaping or being brought to the northern shores of Australia as 
slaves by ‘‘red men.” 
The conclusions of Dr. Pritchard* as to the derivation of the 
Tasmanians and the Australians are noteworthy. They mark 
the great advance made in Ethnology since the year 1847, but 
they also disclose the germs of those beliefs as to the primitive 
races of mankind who inhabited the Australian and Melanesian 
regions and the Indo Malayan archipelago, which are now fairly 
established and accepted by Ethnologists. 
He goes back to primitive black tribes inhabiting “ Oceania, 
Oceanic Negritia, or Oceanic Negroland,” at a time when the 
‘**Malayo-Polynesian” race had not yet entered the Indian Archi- 
pelago. , 
He considered that this Negrito race was spread by way of 
New Guinea over the adjacent Archipelago of islands, and that 
one branch took a more southerly course by the chain of islands 
ending at Timor, and lastly entered Australia. 
In the same year Dr. Latham? stated in the Appendix to the 
narrative of the surveying voyage of the “Fly,” during the years 
1842-1846, that the Tasmanian language has aflinities with both 
the Australian and New Caledonian languages, but in a stronger 
degree with the latter than the former. This he considered will 
at once explain the points of physical contrast between the Tas- 
manian tribes and those of Australia, and will indicate that the 
stream of population for Van Diemen’s Land ran round Australia 
rather than across it. 
Mr. Edward John Kyre{ expressed the belief in the journal of 
his expedition of discovery into Central Australia in the years 
1840-1, that there are grounds for the opinion that Australia was 
first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallel of 
12° and 16° south latitude. Thence he surmises that three great 
divisions branched out from the parent tribe, and from their offsets 
the whole continent was overspread. 
Mr. McGillivray,§ after quoting Eyre, Pritchard, and Latham, 
says in his acconnt of the voyage of the ‘“‘ Rattlesnake,” published 
1852, that a common origin is implied by the belief in the unity 
of the Australian race. That it was not derived from. New 
Guinea can scarcely be doubted, since Cape York and the neigh- 
bouring shores of the mainland are occupied by genuine and 
unmixed Australians, while islands of Torres Strait and the 
adjacent coast of New Guinea are occupied by equally genuine 
Papuans. Intermediate in position between the two races, and 
occupying the point of junction at the Prince of Wales Island, 
* XLIV, vol. Vv, p. 214. t+ XXXVI. } xvii, p. 405. § xxXvil, Vol. 1, p. 81. 
