112 



Professor Tate read a paper upon tlie winter-flowering state 

 o£ Hypoxis pusilla (Hooker). (Seep. 76.) 



SMALLPOX AND AUSTEALIAJf ABORIGINES. 



A communication from Mr. W. H. Tietkens, F.E.G.S., was 

 read in reference to a previous discussion on the subject of 

 smallpox amongst the natives of Australia. He stated that the 

 E^awlinson Eanges, which are situated in 8. latitude 24° 30', 

 E. longitude 127° 42', were visited by Ernest Giles and himself 

 in 1873. The Eange, quite in the heart of the continent, was 

 surrounded on all sides b}^ a A^ast extent of uninhabited country, 

 quite of a desert character, waterless, and covered with dense 

 scrub of mallee and mulga, and only under the most favourable 

 circumstances could it be traversed by the natives, and until 

 he and his companion went there it certainly had never been 

 visited by whites. There they found a people quite isolated 

 from the rest of the world, breathing the pure dry air of the 

 interior, who wandered in small communities from place to 

 place, who seldom camped or remained a whole day in one 

 place, deeply marked with smallpox. AVhat measures they took 

 to prevent contagion or alleviate their sufferings, or how many 

 were carried off, would probably be never known. Of fifteen 

 or twenty men who visited the camp eight were unmistakeably 

 marked with smallpox. Professor Tate, while at Palmerston, 

 was shown a plant which the natives of that country, it was 

 supposed, used as an antidote. In the list of plants by Baron 

 von Mueller collected upon the expedition the Sarcosiemma 

 australe is mentioned as having been found upon the Eawlinson 

 Eanges. 



The germs of the disease suspended in the air, might, in 

 densely populated countries, propagate contagion, but those 

 would be destroyed by the hot winds and summer's suii in 

 crossing such tracts of waterless and uninhabited country. If, 

 then, a people were found under such circumstances Vv'ho were 

 subject to the disease, how could we expect immunity who were 

 at times somewhat negligent, the writer asked. 



Mrs. Eichards on this subject wrote that at the end of 1866 

 and the early part of 1867 the natives of Streaky Bay and 

 Eowler's Bay had what was supposed to be smallpox, great 

 numbers of them dying. A few of the affected were still living, 

 and very much pitted, more especially an old lubra, who was 

 blind; although constantly with them, no white person was 

 known to have taken the disease. 



Professor Tate said Mrs. Eichards mentioned the fact that 

 Dr. Gething was sent by the Government to attend to the 

 natives at Streaky Bay, and he (the speaker) wrote to him 

 touching his experience. The doctor called upon him, and he 



