142 Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



by any tribes of the Malay family. These remains of an extinct 

 civilization consist chiefly of picture-caves and sculptured rocks, 

 works which the present occupants of the soil, far from claiming as 

 their own, ascribe to diabolical agency. As the features and dresses 

 of the figures represented are such as no untutored savage could 

 possibly conceive, and the tools and pigments used are unknown to 

 the existing race, the only just inference we can draw from these 

 facts is, that some more civilized people has been destroyed by the 

 black man ; or, possibly, in some instances, the two races have 

 blended,, a supposition that would enable us in some measure to ac- 

 count for diversities of characteristics found to exist in various loca- 

 lities. The anomalies for which we thus seek to account exist chiefly 

 among the inland tribes, in which we occasionally meet with physiog- 

 nomies departing widely from the Australian type ; and, to reconcile 

 the discrepancies, we are driven to suppose that the fact is owing to 

 a mixture of the blood of a pristine race with that of the Alfoura ; 

 for, had this blending of races been due to the migration of strangers 

 from the sea-board, traces of their presence would be equally per- 

 ceptible along the lines of their journej'ings. On the western and 

 northern coasts, we find the greatest departures from the normal 

 type ; and this, doubtless, is owing to the advent of strangers among 

 them : those shores bordering on much-frequented seas being more 

 likely to have been visited by such than either the south or east 

 coasts, which were, perhaps, never visited until European enterprise 

 led the white man to them. One of the principal causes of the re- 

 duction of the aboriginal population is the scarcity of the larger 

 kinds of game, consequent on the introduction of cattle and sheep 

 into their country ; for the continual tending of the flocks and herds, 

 the frequent driving of them from place to place, but, above all, the 

 constant passage of the stock-drivers, and the wanton havoc of the 

 Kuropenns, nil concur to scare bhe game, and eventually to drive it 

 beyond the limits of the space assigned to the tribe in whose country 

 these settlers have taken up their abodes ; added to which, as such set- 

 tlements arc located in the most fertile parts, from which the natives 

 draw the chief portion of their vegetable diet, it very soon happens 

 that the aborigines find ;i scarcity, of food ; and, as tho territorial 

 bound arie of each tribe are well defined, they cannot retreat before 

 the white invader; for to puss beyond their own limits would be to 

 expose themselves to the hostility of some oilier tribe. AftersufFer? 

 ing banger fora time, the natives are unable to resist the temptation 

 of :i Peasi on the rattle oJ the settlerB; and, to avenge this aot, an 

 ^discriminate slaughter has too often been the policy of the Euro- 

 pean, 



ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIltURGICAL SOCIETY".- 



Jan. 27. 



Entozoa in tih; Human Blood.- The Secretary read an extremely 



Interesting paper by Dr. John BFarley, of King's College Hospital, 



on a malady (haamaturia) produced by ;i species of Distoma at flic 



Cape of Good Hope and at the Mauritius. Dr. Harley, from an 



