PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 741 
Cretaceous period and before the deposition of the Eocene beds 
of Table Cape and along the northern shores of Tasmania.” 
The re-elevation of the land to which Mr. Montgomery refers 
may be reasonably considered as that which I have connected 
with the Newer Volcanic Era in Victoria. 
The commencement of this later connection of Tasmania and 
Victoria may be provisionally placed in the Peiocene epoch. 
What may have been its duration it is not possible to state within 
definite limits; but it may have been as late as the more recent 
voleanoes of south-western Victoria and the south-eastern district 
of South Australia. 
Professor Tate says of the latter that they are newer than the 
Pleiocene sand and loess which are interstratified between the 
Mount Gambier limestones and the ashbeds of that place. He 
considers that man probably witnessed the showers of ash and 
the glow of internal fires from the cones of these voleanoes.* 
The late discovery by Mr. 8. Hart of the fossilised bones of 
extinct marsupials in black clay beneath the “second rock ” and 
resting on volcanic ash in the mine of the Great Buninyong 
Estate Company, which I have more fully noted later in this 
address, shows that some at least of the volcanoes of the Ballarat 
district were active when Macropus anak was living. 
If the cuts on one of the bones found there are finally accepted 
as having been on them at the time of their discovery, there will 
be evidence of man’s existence as the contemporary of the extinct 
giant marsupials in the Newer Volcanic Era. 
I may now advance a further step and consider what was the 
derivation of the primitive Tasmanians and Australians. 
From the conclusions to which I have now been led, it follows 
that the Tasmanians were the autochthonous inhabitants of 
Australia, and that their preservation in Tasmania was due to 
isolation by the formation of Bass Strait. 
The occupation of the continent by the Australians who, it 
may be reasonably held, were ina higher state of culture, and who 
were better armed than the Tasmanians, must have resulted in 
the amalgamation of the two races, either by the subjection of 
the latter, or, what is more likely from what we know of the 
Australians of the present day, by the extirpation of the former 
inhabitants, so far at least as regarded the males, and the absorp- 
tion of the females into the tribe. 
At any rate, whatever the process may have been, the result 
may be accepted of a strong negroid cross in the Australians. 
Deducting this negroid element, there remains a residuum from 
which also must be deducted the “ Malay element” of Mr. 
Mathew,} who finds in the Australian language traces of Malay 
yap: xix: (ARK, 
