226 



Tasmanian natives were not in the habit of attaching handles 

 to their flint hatchets, or other implements, as was the case 

 among the Australian natives" [viii., p. 335]. 



VI. SUMMAKY AND CONCLUSIONS. 



The tableland country of Central Australia forms a 

 very distinct geographical province and represents a residual 

 land surface of very ancient topographical features. So far 

 as evidences are available the country has not been below 

 the sea since Cretaceous times. The "tableland" probably 

 had its origin in a previous geographical cycle. The rivers, 

 at the present time, spread their sediments over a relatively 

 flat country, at lower levels than the old "table-top" hills 

 that are residual of an earlier alluviation. 



With the waste of the softer beds that underlie the 

 siliceous capping of the "tabletops," the latter is broken up 

 and the loose stones are gently let down, by waste, to lower 

 levels, forming the great stony deserts of the interior. On 

 this ancient land-surface are found worked stone implements 

 of particular types. 



These implements, in their characteristic forms, do not* 

 bear any close resemblance to such as are in use by the present 

 native tribes of Australia. Many of the stone implements 

 used by the Australian Aborigines are crude in the extreme, 

 and some such have even been hafted; but, in contrast to 

 these, many have been very finely finished. Their polished 

 axes, symmetrically chipped spear points, hafted knives, and 

 womerah chisels, may distinguish their artefacts as Neolithic 

 in type, although representing a stage below that of the 

 Neolithic art seen in the prehistoric remains of the latest 

 Stone Age in Europe. 



The implements that occur among the gibber stones of 

 the tableland are, commonly, of large size and possess certain 

 characteristics that are described in this paper. 



It is possible, that the peculiar features of the stony 

 deserts of Central Australia, and the' nature of the raw 

 material available there, may have given rise to the use of 

 certain stone implements, in a local way, by the present 

 native tribes of Australia that was not represented elsewhere 

 in the continent. 



Whilst these implements do not show a close resemblance 

 to those now, or lately, in use among the Australian 

 Aborigines, they afford numerous analogues with the stone 

 implements that were in use by the late Aborigines of 

 Tasmania. 



This similarity of workmanship may be taken, so far as 

 it goes, as presumptive evidence of a relationship as to origin. 



