THE ABORIGINES OP AUSTBALIA. 251 



ed in a manner which helps to explain the marvellous prevalence of 

 consumption among them. That they are pretty in mere girlhood 

 is unquestionable, but in the slight form, blanched cheek, and flat 

 bust, one sees only the beauty of decay. They are ever more 

 and more becoming incompetent to be mothers of children, and I am 

 assured that the number of deaths among young married females is 

 quite remarkable. One looks in vain through any part of New Eng- 

 land for the round, full, vigor of glorious health, which, everywhere in 

 Old England, shows a popidation as replete with sturdy, vital energy, 

 as at any period in the long story of our dear Mother-land. 



I would, further, call attention to the portraits painted seventy 

 years since, and those taken at the present day. These, if all else 

 were wanting, demonstrate a great falling off. 



The causes of all this seem to be as follows : 



I. Climate, possibly, has much to do with it. Even in Canada 

 the children are not so vigorous as their fathers. 



II. The thing eaten, and the mode of eating, have much to do with 

 it. Americans eat quantities of unwholesome food, and the bulk of 

 the people never chew what they swallow. 



III. The women abjure all out of door exercise. 



IV. The men do the same. 



V. They live in a perpetual state of excitement, such as no race 

 on earth can endure, or were ever meant to endure. 



VI. The population receives little accession of fresh blood, and 

 blood relations frequently intermarry. 



VII. It is alleged that vice has no small share in the work of 

 destruction. 



THE ABORIGINES OE AUSTRALIA. 



BY JAMES BEOWNE, TOBONTO. 



Bead before the Canadian Institute, February IQth, 1856. 



In the following paper I purpose attempting to give an account of 

 the Aborigines of Australia, a subject not without interest to us as 

 relating to a people situated in a remote portion of the British 

 Empire, but on whom its civilization has produced no beneficent 

 influences. On them it is enacting, even more rapidly than on the 

 Aborigines of this continent, the fatal effects which appear inevitably 

 to flow from the contact of savage with highly civilized life, and these 



