ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (AUSTRALASIAN.) 



the last meeting was the successful achievements of 

 Nansen. The scientific results of this wonderful 

 venture had not yet been published, but two re- 

 markable advances in geographical science were 

 announced : (1) That the north polar ocean was not 

 a shallow sea, with scattered islands, distributing 

 icebergs, but a profound ocean basin ; (2) that there 

 were definite movements of the great ice cakes, and 

 they crossed, and did not merely circulate round 

 the pole. After discussing at length the many 

 phases of the subject of submarine geography, the 

 peaker said the practical use of a more extended 

 tudy of submarine geography was undoubted. By 

 gaining a familiarity with the geography of the sea 

 bottom, such as they had with the land surface, the 

 laying of telegraph cables would be less liable to 

 encounter failure. 



Subsequently the following-named papers were 

 read and discussed before the section : " Sixty Years' 

 Progress of Geographical Discovery, 1837-'97 " and 

 'Over Land and Sea: Dr. Andree's Aerial Voyage 

 to the North Pole," by A. E. Macdonald ; " Sugges- 

 tions for the Continuation of Detailed Explorations 

 of Central Australia," by W. H. Tietkens ; " The 

 Discovery of New Guinea by Antonio D'Abreu," by 

 J. R. MacClymont ; " Australian Oceanography and 

 the Determination of Heights by Other than Spirit- 

 Level Methods," by T. W. Fowler; and " Picturesque 

 Tasmania," by Alexander Morton, 



F. Ethnology and Anthropology. A. W. Howitt, 

 rho for many years had been Secretary for Mines 

 the colony of Victoria, presided over this section, 

 ,11 d delivered an address " On the Origin of the Ab- 

 origines of Tasmania and Australia." He said that 

 the level of culture in the Tasmanian aborigines, 

 apart from a consideration of their customs and be- 

 liefs, was best indicated by their weapons of war and 

 implements, the former consisting of a thin pole, 

 hardened and pointed in the fire, and a club, which 

 was used also as a missile ; while, as to their imple- 

 ments, flints chipped on one side were used for cut- 

 ting and scraping, and were held in the hand with- 

 out a handle for chopping. The aborigines of Aus- 

 tralia stood on a somewhat higher level, being better 

 armed and having ground and polished stone axes 

 fixed into handles. Moreover, while the Tasmanian 

 savages had only a rude raft made of bark tied 

 together, the Australian aborigines had the bark 

 canoe which could cross wider stretches of water 

 than the catamarans of the Tasmanians. The Aus- 

 tralian might, he thought, be said to represent hunt- 

 ing tribes of the neolithic age. He went on to say 

 that it had been generally assumed that the ances- 

 tors of both the Tasmanians and Australians must 

 have reached their habitats by means of canoes or 

 ships, but there was but little direct evidence that 

 such was the case. On the contrary, however, such 

 a theory, which implied that the savages here were 

 the degenerated descendants of people acquainted 

 with navigation, was negatived by all they knew of 

 their social and tribal customs. After drawing a 

 mimber of conclusions from ascertained facts, he 

 said that if his inferences were sound it would fol- 

 low that the navigation of the primitive Tasmanians 

 must be placed far back in prehistoric, if not in 

 pleistocene, time at least. The weight of evidence 

 went to show that the Tasmanian aborigines were 

 offshoots of that stock to which the name of Oceanic 

 Negritus was applied. To speak of the Tasmanian 

 as being " Melanesian " appeared therefore to be 

 hardly correct. The primitive Australians, in oc- 

 cupying the continent, must have amalgamated 

 with the autochthonous inhabitants of the same 

 stock as the Tasmanians. The conclusion that the 

 primitive Australians migrated by land necessarily 

 placed their separation from the 'present stock far 

 back in time, although subsequent to the migration 



of the primitive Tasmanians. while yet before that 

 of the early Melanesians. The early Australian 

 stock might be assumed to have been a low form of 

 Caucasian Melanochroi. This solution, moreover, 

 would connect the primitive Australian and the 

 Dravidians of southern India, not, as some authors 

 had postulated, by the arrival of shiploads of Dra- 

 vidians in Australia, but by the common descent of 

 both from a parent stock at a time when the state 

 of culture was not higher than that of the socially 

 most backward standing tribes of Australia at the 

 present time. 



The following-named papers were then read and 

 discussed before the section : " Pictorial Art of the 

 Australian Aborigines" and "Australian Initiation 

 Ceremonies," by R. H. Mathews ; " Some Customs 

 and Superstitions of the Maoris," by Elsdon Best ; 

 "Mythology of the Efatese" and "The Oceanic 

 Family of Languages," by Rev. Dr. Macdonald ; 

 "The Origin of the Aborigines of Tasmania and 

 Australia," by A. W. Howitt ; " The Dialectical 

 Changes of the Indo-Polynesian Languages," by 

 Samuel Ella; "Le Dieu, La Nature, et L'Ame," a 

 translation of which was read by John Fraser ; 

 " The Life History of a Savage " and " Notes from 

 New Guinea and New Britain," by George Brown ; 

 " Black, Red, and White as Symbols " and " On 

 Some Indian Words of Relationship used by the 

 Australian Tribes," by John Fraser ; " A Female 

 Hermit of the South Pacific, with her Song " and 

 " Concerning Unga as a Term for Slave in Rara- 

 tonga," by W. Wyatt Gill ; " Proposal for a Bureau 

 of Ethnology in Australasia," by A. Hamilton ; 

 " Ancient Geography of the Maoris," " The Geo- 

 graphical Knowledge of the Polynesians " and 

 " How New Zealand became Inhabited," by S. Percy 

 Smith ; " Notes on the Disappearance of Native 

 Races in General, and of Fijians in Particular," by 

 H. H. Thiele ; " Tahitian and Hawaiian Tattoo- 

 ing," by Miss Teira Henry; "Vocabularies of the 

 Geelong and Colac Tribes in 1840." by J. J. Cary ; 

 " Notes bearing on Natives of the Upper Murchison 

 District, Western Australia," by Alexander Morton ; 

 " Wollambi Rock Carvings," by J. Enright; "Aus- 

 tralian Cave Paintings and Rock Carvings " and 

 " Old Samoan Amusements, Trades, and Employ- 

 ments," by J. B. Stair; "The Murchison Blacks of 

 Western Australia," by Alexander Morton ; and 

 "Syllabic Characters on a Cave Painting on the 

 Glenelg River, N. W. Australia," by John Camp- 

 bell. 



G. Economic Science and Agriculture. The pre- 

 siding officer of this section was R. M. Johnson, the 

 Statistician and Registrar General for Tasmania, 

 and the author of a " Systematic Account of the 

 Geology of Tasmania." He chose as the suBject of 

 his address " Comparative Share of Consumable 

 Wealth actually appropriated or absorbed by the 

 Various Agencies engaged in its Production.' 1 He 

 said that the term " wealth " was the principal 

 source of confusion in all social and economic ques- 

 tions. The manner in which the term should be 

 used or interpreted depended entirely upon the 

 nature of the question with which the generic word 

 wealth was brought into relationship or conjunc- 

 tion. Owing to the backward state of economic 

 science as compared with the various branches of 

 natural science, the phrase " the wealth of a 

 country " covered widely divergent conceptions. 

 The statistician's wealth of a country might mean 

 either private wealth or public wealth, or both. In 

 any case, it rarely embraced more than one third of 

 the real monetary value of the total wealth in ex- 

 change of the economist, and certainly seldom more 

 than 2 to 3 per cent, of the corresponding monetary 

 or exchange value of the total capital of the true 

 wealth in exchange of the economist. It altogether 



