TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 1015 



Nynehead Court, Somerset, wlio trouf^lit it half a century ago from the Perth 

 district of West Australia. The blade of this instrument, with its unsymmetrical 

 edge formed hy chipping along one side of the original flake, is simply indis- 

 tinguishable from the ordinary Tasmanian form placed beside it. Professor Tylor 

 stated that, unwilling to judge hastily from a single specimen, he had for years 

 been in correspondence with anthropologists in Australia as to the presence there 

 of such implements, and had lately, through communications from the Bishop of 

 Tasmania and Mr. Alexander Morton, of the Hobart Museum, received intelligence 

 that the latter, than whom no one better understands the Tasmanian implement 

 question, has on a late journey to the little-kno^v■n Murchison district in West 

 Australia, while not meeting with ground stone axes, found the natives using 

 chipped stones quite similar to those used by the Tasmanian aborigines, as shown by 

 photographs sent for comparison. These quasi-pahieolithic implements not having 

 yet been dispossessed in this district by the ground stone hatchets, which apparently 

 were introduced from the Torres Straits region, it would seem that this neolithic 

 invasion was of no remote date, and that the vast area including Australia as well 

 as Tasmania may have been till then peopled by tribes surviving at a level of the 

 Stone Age which had not yet risen to that of the remotely ancient European tribes 

 of the Drift gravels and limestone caves. The writer of the paper, while dis- 

 claiming any hasty inference, called attention from this point of view to the 

 importance of, and the similarities between, the modern Australioid skulls and the 

 prsehistoric skulls of Neanderthal, Spy, Padbaba, &c. 



6. On tlie Natives of North- West Australia, 

 By Louis de Rougemont. 



SATURBAY, SEPTEMBER 10. 



1. Eeport on the North- Western Trihes of Canada. 

 See Reports, p. 628. 



2. On the Tarahumare Feoj^le of Mexico. By A. Krauss. 



The Tarahumare people occupy an oblong strip of country in the Sierra Madre 

 range, lying approximately between 26° and 29° N. latitude, chiefly on the 

 Western side of the ' Continental Divide,' and at an average altitude of 7,000- 

 8,000 feet. They wander but little from their mountain-gorges, but have been for 

 a century or more in occasional contact with civilised people. 



They are short in stature, with regular features, and long, straight, black hair, 

 which is worn long, tied or plaited round the head ; hair on the face is rare. 

 Their powers of endurance are remarkable. 



They are essentially an agricultural people, growing maize, from which they 

 prepare the crushed and parched meal called pinoli, and keeping large herds of 

 goats and black sheep. Cattle are only used for ploughing ; but animals which 

 die are occasionally eaten. A fermented liquor, called tesJndn, is prepared from 

 maize, with pine needles and wild oats. 



The men's dress consists of a simple loin cloth secured by a sash, with sandals 

 and a head-cloth ; a blanket is carried in cold weather and on journeys. The 

 women wear a woollen skirt. 



Hand-made pottery is used for cooking, with occasional utensils of wood, and 

 in agriculture a simple plough, a pointed stick for planting, and a simple hoe. 

 Their only weapons are bows and arrows, of which the points are of hard wood or 

 of agate, and occasionally of old iron. No metal-working is practised, though 

 mineral ores exist in the country. 



