726 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
impossible to define exactly the race to which they were most 
closely allied, but that a comparison of their physical and mental 
characteristics with those of other races which appear to have 
close similarities, tends to the conclusion that the Tasmanians 
were more closely related to the Andaman Islanders than to any 
other race. 
Mr. R. Brough Smyth,* in the introduction to his work on the 
Aborigines of Victoria, published in 1878, says that it is difficult 
to believe the Tasmanians were scions of the continental tribes, 
and that if Tasmania was peopled from Australia it was at a time 
when the latter supported a race that in feature, character, and 
language was Tasmanian. 
As to the Australians, he says that they may have landed from 
Timor, but that it is doubtful whether if a canoe full ef natives 
landed anywhere upon the coast of Australia they could find sub- 
sistence. Yet he speaks of one stream of migration coming from 
the north-east, which divided one branch of which following the 
coast northwards, ultimately reached Gippsland ; the other again 
dividing at the south-eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, 
one section took a course along the coast westward and. south- 
ward to Western Australia, and the other followed the course of 
the rivers that flow southwards into Cooper’s Creek and the 
Darling. 
In the “ Australian Race,” published in 1886, Mr. E. M. Curry 
formulated a theory which may be condensed as follows, leaving 
those who desire to do so to peruse the somewhat remarkable 
reasons which are advanced in its support. 
All tribes of Australia are descendants from one source, pro- 
bably, indeed, from a shipload or canoeful of persons who originally 
found their way to these shores. According to the agreement 
between custom and language, they were negroes from Africa. 
These ancestors of the Australian race landed on the north west 
coast many ages back, and their descendants spread themselves 
over the continent by travelling along the north, west, and east 
coasts, and also through the interior. 
In 1889, the Rev. John Mathew,{ who has had opportunities 
of becoming personally acquainted with many examples of the 
aborigines, published an elaborate paper on the “ Australian 
Aborigines.” He considers them in relation to their origin, 
mytholog y, and traditions ; their implements, customs, language, 
mental characteristics, food, institutions and superstitions. He 
considers that Australia was first occupied by a purely Papuan 
people, or possibly by a people produced by a fusion of Papuans 
and Melanesians sparsely and unevenly distributed over the con- 
tinent. Taking for granted that the cradle of the human race was 
* XLIxX, p. LXII et infra. t+ vu, pp. 158 to 190. { XxxIx, vol. xxi, part 11, 1889. 
