TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 143 



native plants which would have been worth the trouble of cultivation, if they had 

 attained to the agricultural stage. 



This argument applies with even more force to pottery ; if the first settlers in 

 Australia were acquainted with this art, I can see no reason why they should 

 suddenly and completely have lost it. 



The Duke, indeed, appears to maintain that though the natives of Van Diemen's 

 Land (whom he evidently regards as belonging to the same race as the Australians 

 and Polynesians, from both of which they are entirely distinct) "must originally 

 have come from countries where both corn and cattle were to be had," still " de- 

 gradation could not possibly be avoided." This seems to be the natm-al inference 

 from the Duke's language, and suggests a very gloomy feature for our Australian 

 fellow-countrymen. The position is, however, .so manifestly untenable, when once 

 put into plain language, that I think it unnecessary to dwell longer on this part of 

 the subject. Even the Duke himself will hardly maintain that om- colonists must 

 fall back because the natives did not improve. Yet he extends and generalizes 

 this argument in a subsequent paragraph, sajnng, " there is hardly a single ftict 

 quoted by Sir J. Lubbock in favour of his own theory, which when "viewed in con- 

 nexion with the same imdisputable principles, does not tell against that theory 

 rather than in its favour." So far from being " indisputable," the principle that 

 when savages remained savages, civilized settlers must descend to the same level, 

 appears to me entirely erroneous. On reading the above passage, however, I passed 

 on with much interest to see which of my facts I had so strangely misread. 



The great majority of facts connected with savage life have no perceptible 

 bearing on the question, and I must therefore have been not only very stupid, 

 but also singularly unfortunate, if of all those quoted by me in support of my 

 argument there was " hardly a single one," which read aright was not merely 

 irrelevant, but actually told against me. In support of his statement the Duke 

 gives three illustrations, but it is remarkable that not one of these three cases was 

 referred to by me in the present discussion, or in favour of my theory. If all the 

 facts on which I relied told against me, it is curious that the Duke should not give 

 an instance. The three illustrations which he quotes from my ' Prehistoric Times ' 

 seem to me irrelevant, but as the Duke thinks other-wise, and some may agree 

 with him, it will be worth while to see how he uses them, and whether they give 

 any real support to his argument. As already mentioned they are three in number. 



" Sir J. Lubbock," he says, "reminds us that in a cave on the north-west coast, 

 tolerable figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards, canoes, and some quadrupeds 

 &c. were found, and yet that the present natives of the country where they were 

 found were utterly incapable of realizing the most vivid artistic representations, 

 and ascribe the drawings in the cave to diabolical agency." 



This does not prove much, because the Australian tribes differ much in their 

 artistic condition ; some of them still make rude drawings like those above described. 



Secondly, he says, " Sir .T. Lubbock quotes the testimony of Cook, in respect to 

 the Tasmanians, that they had no canoes. Yet their ancestors could not have 

 reached the island by walking on the sea." 



This argument woidd equally prove that the kangaroos and Echidnas must have 

 had civiHzed ancestors; it would have been equally inipossible for "their ancestors 

 to have reached the island by walking on the sea." The Duke, though admittino- 

 the antiquity of man, does not I think appreciate the geological changes which 

 have taken place during the human period. 



The only other case which he quotes is that of the highland Eskimo, who had no 

 weapons nor any idea of war. The Duke's comment is as follows. " No wonder, 

 poor people ! They had been driven into regions where no stronger race coidd desire 

 to follow them. But that the fathers had once known what war and violence 

 meant, there is no more conclusive proof than the dwelling-place of their children." 



It is perhaps natural that the head of a gi-eat Highland Clan should regard with 

 pity a people who, having " once known what war and violence meant," have no 

 longer any neighbours to pillage or to fight, but a lowlauder can hardly be expected 

 seriously to regard such a change as one calculated to excite pity, or as any evidence 

 of degradation. In my first paper I deduced an argument, the condition of religion 

 among the different races of man, a part of the subject which has since been 



