1388 The Zoologist— October, 1868. 



2. The Newfoundlander, the species or race destroyed in 1823. 

 " On our first visit to that country the natives were seen in every part of 

 the coast. We occupied the stations where they used to hunt and fish, 

 thus reducing them to want, while we took no trouble to indemnify 

 them ; so that doubtless many of them perished by famine : we also 

 treated them with hostility and cruelty. * * * They must, how- 

 ever, have recently been very numerous, since in one place Captain 

 Buchan found they had run up fences to the extent of thirty miles, 

 with a variety of ramifications, for the purpose of conducting the deer 

 down to the water, a work which would have required a multitude of 

 hands." These people, who are represented as a remarkably fine race, 

 were slaughtered by the English without any parley whatever. The 

 Report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed 

 at the instigation of the Aborigines' Protection Society, observes: " It 

 does not appear that any measures were taken to open a com- 

 munication with them before the year 1810, when, by order of Sir 

 J. Duckworth, an attempt was made by Captain Buchan, which 

 proved ineffectual." Thus it is shown that for a hundred and fifty 

 years the murderous system was carried on as against unreasoning 

 vermin of any kind, and that then the attempt at a compromise 

 was untried. "At that time," I still quote the Report, "he (Captain 

 Buchan) conceived that their numbers around their chief place 

 of resort, the Great Lake, were reduced to 400 or 500. Under our 

 treatment they continued rapidly to diminish ; and it appears probable 

 that the last of the tribe left at large, a man and a woman, were shot 

 by two Englishmen in 1823." Fit climax. 



3. The Tasmaman was destroyed in 1860. This race, like many 

 others, was extremely circumscribed in its limits : regarded super- 

 ficially all the inhabitants of that vast assemblage of islands which 

 occupy the Pacific are Australasian ; but when brought under the 

 cognizance of Science a number of technical differences are per- 

 ceived which prove that they arc entirely distinct. The Tasmauian 

 differed in the most marked manner from his nearest neighbour, the 

 Australian, in having a woolly head like the negro, while the Australian 

 possessed the straight lank hair of the Malay. Tasmania was dis- 

 covered in 1642, and was visited by Cook in 1777. At first it was 

 supposed to form part of New Holland, and was called Van Diemen's 

 Land, but this mistake was rectified by the discovery of Bass's Straits, 

 through which our ships very early made their way. Concerning the 

 inhabitants of Tasmania the statements made, or rather collected, by 



