PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. T47 
in the female line to descent counted in the male line; in fact, 
that they have progressed in so far along the same path of social 
development which the ancestors of the most advanced civilised 
races have pursued. This is not a little remarkable, and, indeed, 
suggestive, when we consider that the advance has been made 
evidently during a time, immense in years, during which the 
Australians have been apparently isolated in this continent from 
outward impulse, to work out as they have done their own 
society. 
A long continued study of the organisation of Australian 
tribes has led Dr. Fison and myself to see that the division of the 
tribe into the two primary divisions, with definite social laws, 
points directly to that which we have termed the ‘“ undivided 
commune,” and which is moreover clearly pictured by the Mura- 
Mura Legend of the Diéri,* and the entirely parallel Bungil 
Legend of the Woéworung Tribe of Victoria. 
It seems, therefore, quite justifiable to hold that the social 
conditions of the parent stock of the Australians was that of the 
Lake Eyre tribes, if not, indeed, that of the Mura-Mura and 
Bungil Legends. 
This would take us back far into primitive society, and the 
conclusion already provisionally arrived at, that the Australians 
must have reached this continent probably by a land connection 
complete, or almost complete, with the Indo-Asiatie or the exten- 
sion north-westward of the Austral continent, will necessarily 
land us in distant prehistoric, if not in Pleistocene or older time. 
It has been and still is frequently assumed that there is an 
ethnical relationship between the Australians and the Dravidian 
tribes of the Hindostan peninsula, and therefore this requires 
some special attention. 
According to Professor Huxley,t any one who has ever seen an 
Australian and a Dravidian will be struck with the resembiance 
between the two. But this resemblance includes a negroid 
element of the Australian, which is not, according to other 
observers, always apparent in the Dravidians, who have, however, 
been subject to racial influences during long ages in India, from 
which the Australians have been protected by isolation. 
The Dravidians are evidently not so uniform as appears to have 
been assumed, nor so marked a type as the Australians. Professor 
Keane? says that the separation of populations resident between 
the Himalaya and the Vindhya Mountains, from the Dravidian 
of the Deccan, is based wholly on the fact that the two former 
speak languages which are more or less directly descended from 
the Sanscrit. According to Mr. Baden-Powell,§ the Dravidians 
have been greatly affected by admixture of northern, possibly 
* XVIII, p. 25. t xxx, p. 89. } xxxiv, pp. 417, 418. § 1, p. 88. 
