734 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
have entered this continent. But this would have been anterior 
to the subsidence of Torres Strait as we now see them. 
Thus all the evidence which I have been able to collect points 
to there having been a more practicable line of migration by way 
of New Guinea than by Timor. 
At present too little is known of New Guinea to enable anything 
to be said as to traces of the Tasmanian and the Australian stocks 
in that island. But it is to be noted that New Guinea, Australia, 
and Tasmania were during our time, and as to the two former, 
still are occupied respectively by three well-defined types of man, 
effectually separated from each other by Torres Strait to the 
north and Bass’s Strait to the south of Australia. 
The relative positions of these peoples show that the Papuans, 
Australians, and Tasmanians must have occupied their respective 
locations in such manner that Bass’s Strait stopped the march of 
the Australians, and Torres Strait of the Papuans. 
It is now to be considered whether there are any data from 
which a fair inference may be drawn as to the former existence 
of a land bridge between Australia and Tasmania, across which 
the Tasmanians might pass to the latter country. 
The time when such a land bridge between Australia and 
Tasmania may be thought to have existed is, so far as relates to 
the primitive Tasmanians, necessarily limited by the probable 
period of man’s existence on the Australian continent, or in lands 
connected therewith in the past. 
At present there is difference of opinion as to the precise 
geological age of the older Tertiary marine formations of Victoria, 
South Australia, and Tasmania.* But, for my purpose, I need 
merely refer to the period of depression during which the marine 
series of formations of older Tertiary age were laid down in Aus- 
tralia from the Snowy River, in Gippsland, to the Great Aus- 
tralian Bight, and on the north coast of Tasmania, as at Table 
Cape. It is clear that upon this followed an upward movement 
of the land, which was accompanied by, or culminated in, volcanic 
action in central and south-western Victoria, constituting the 
newer volcanic era, which by Victorian geologists has been placed 
in the Pleiocene epoch.t At that time a large extent of the 
central-western portion of Victoria was covered more or less by 
sheets or strips of basaltic lavas. Most of the ancient river-beds 
trending north and south from the Main Divide were more or less 
filled in by lava flows, which, while often confined between 
elevated Silurian ridges near the hilly country, spread out and 
united with the wide sheets that now constitute the plains. 
To the northward of Ballarat portions of the Main Divide is of 
volcanic formation, and a wide sheet extending to the northwards 
* XLV, p. 358. ¢ xLu, p. 117. 
