728 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
simply walked overland. Mr. Etheridge adds to this in a foot-note, 
that there is not a fragment of evidence to show that the arrival 
of man was coeval with that of the dingo. 
Dr. John Fraser has stated his views of the origin of the Aus- 
tralians in the introduction to his work “An Australian Lan- 
guage,” published in 1892.* He holds that the negroid popula- 
tion of Australia or iginated in Babylonia, and that it was driven 
into southern India by the “ confusion of tongues ” which followed 
the attempt of Nimrod to establish dominion over his fellows. 
The overthrow of the Chaldean monarchy, about 1500 B.c. by 
Arab tribes drove thousands of Kushites into southern India, 
where they took refuge in the mountains of the Dekkan, and 
where to the present day there are Dravidian and Kolarian black- 
skinned and savage races. 
The Babylonian Kushites are then supposed to have been driven 
out of India into the Malay peninsula, Papua and Timor by 
Dravidian tribes who came down from Central Asia. Finally 
they found their way into Australia. 
These conclusions appear to rest mainly if not altogether upon 
philological deductions which also cause the author to argue that 
the Australians, the Dravidians, Malays, Papuans, Fijians, Sa- 
moans, and the New Hebrideans were at one time part of a com- 
mon stock. 
A. very important contribution to the literature of this subject 
was a memoir which appeared in 1896, the joint authors of which 
were Mr. R. Etheridge, jun., and Professor T. W. Edgeworth 
David, and Mr. J. W. Grimshaw.t+ 
In carrying out the excavation for a canal at Shea’s Creek an 
old land surface was disclosed with standing stumps of Eucalyptus 
botryoides ; bones of dugong were also found confusedly heaped to- 
gether, some of which were scarred transversel y and obliquely with 
cuts having the appearance of cuts made by the direct blows of a 
sharped- edged stone tomahawk. Stone tomahawks were also 
found at a “depth of six feet, the submerged forest being ten feet 
below low water. 
The latest work with which I am acquainted which expresses 
an opinion as to the derivation of the Australian aborigine is the 
second edition issued in 1897 of Mr. G. W. Rusden’s History of 
Australia. { 
The author places the original site of the Australian stock 
among the Deccan tribes of Hindustan, and says that in a prehis- 
toric time some powerful class or race of invaders sought to impose 
the peace of death upon the ancestors of the Australians. Their 
safety was in flight, and they migrated southwards from island to 
island until in Australia they marched free from molestation. 
®XXIL ft XVI, pp. 18 et seq. pxbyul, vol. 1, pp. 84 ebseg. 
