322 FOSSIL REMAINS 



civilised man. What the savage is at the present day he 

 seems to have been six or seven thousand years since, and 

 this is about the period at which I should put his exist- 

 ence in the land. There is no direct evidence to show that 

 it is older than this ; but there is one puzzling circumstance 

 which I cannot explain : I have always considered that the 

 dingo-dog has been introduced by man, but traces of the 

 dog's existence are much older than those of man. Of 

 course the dog may have been introduced by casual visitors 

 before the land was inhabited, though this is scarcely 

 likely. Again, the dog may have been introduced by other 

 than human agency. This is unlikely, but still possible. 



My chief reason for believing that the dingo was intro- 

 duced is the fact that the animal appears suddenly in pre- 

 tertiary times, and yet it stands alone. No possible 

 ancestors from which it might have sprung have been 

 discovered in Australia, and there were never any other 

 animals of the genus on the continent. There was a 

 species of thylacine ; but though this animal is to some 

 extent dog-like, it is certainly not in any way related to 

 the dingo, but is clearly descended from a marsupial. It 

 is worth noting that thylacine and dingo in New South 

 Wales are of about the same geological age. The 

 thylacine has not been found by me in northern or 

 western deposits, but remains of the dingo are spread all 

 over the continent. 



In the secluded valleys of the Blue Mountains, and on 

 the plains to the eastward, which, being those nearest my 

 early home, were first examined by me, the remains of 

 small marsupials are very abundant, and in this district 

 I discovered several new species, most of them prior 

 to the year 1875. Amongst others from this region, I 

 found two or three species of rat which were not marsu- 

 pials. As these were of pretertiary age, it is conclusive 

 proof that the prehistoric mammals of this continent 

 were not all marsupials. 



In the bed of a stream in the Swan River district, 

 Western Australia, I found part of a skeleton of a rat 

 which was at least double the size of the modern water-rat 



