The Zoologist— October, 1868. 1389 



Paul Broca, harmonize so exactly with those published by the 

 Aborigines' Protection Society as to remove all doubts of the truthful- 

 ness of either. " The English," says Broca, " so humane and patient 

 as regards the Australians, have committed on the Tasmanian race, 

 and that in the nineteenth century, execrable atrocities a hundred 

 times less excusable than the previously unrivalled crimes of which 

 the Spaniards were guilty in the fifteenth century in the Antilles. 

 * * * These atrocities have terminated in a regular exter- 

 mination." Strzelecki, whose ' Physical Description of New South 

 Wales and Van Diemen's Land' has always been regarded as a work 

 of the highest authority, writes thus: "In 1835 the English of Van 

 Diemen's Land undertook to get rid of the natives altogether. A 

 regular battue was organized in the whole island, and in a short time 

 all Tasmanians, without distinction of age or sex, were exterminated, 

 with the exception of two hundred aud ten individuals who were 

 transported to a small island, Flinders or Fourneaux, in Bass's Straits. 

 This was all the remnant of a race which before the arrival of the 

 English had occupied a territory nearly as large as Ireland. This 

 dreadful massacre produced a profound horror in the English Parlia- 

 ment, but no one suggested the propriety of sending back these un- 

 fortunates to their native soil. Measures, however, were taken to treat 

 them humanely in the Isle of Flinders, and to provide them with 

 abundance of food ; they were also instructed in religion. The island 

 is about thirteen leagues in length aud seven in breadth ; the refugees 

 had thus no want of space. Nevertheless, these two hundred and ten 

 individuals, most of them adults, perished rapidly, and in 1842 fifty- 

 four only survived. During seven years and a few months only 

 fourteen children were born." There is no question that some of the 

 English made certain attempts to improve and civilize these poor 

 creatures, but without beneficial result. One of these philanthropists, 

 writing to Rienzi, also a friend and advocate of the natives, says, 

 " Several of the children have been sent to the schools in Hobart 

 Town, but when arrived at the age of puberty an irresistible impulse 

 compels them to return to their solitudes." Every scrap of information 

 that we can obtain of these poor creatures, from whatever source 

 derived, tells the same tale ; their persecutors and their defenders, — 

 those whose object it was to exterminate and those who laboured to 

 preserve, — all agree with the philosophic Frenchmen who were mere 

 spectators and not performers, that the Tasmanian could not be tamed 

 and has been exterminated. 



