382 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
by plants is necessarily the same as that pursued the higher animals. 
ia president alluded to the great difference between the Australian and 
asmanian, especially in the character of the hair; Le he regarded it as 
bicis impossible that the Tasmanian could have come from Aus- 
ralia 
islands may have extended from New Caledonia to Tasmania, similar to 
hat which now connects New Caledonia with New Guinea; and that 
by this means a low negrito type may have spread eastward over this 
area. — Scientific Opinion. 
Stone IMAGES ON EASTER ÍISLAND.— A paper was read by Mr. J. L. 
Palmer, R. N., on a recent visit to Easter Island in H.M.S. Topaz. Dur- 
ing the visit the singular colossal stone images which excited the aston- 
ishment of Captain Cook and the earlier voyagers were accurately 
observed and measured, and a specimen of them brought away to deposit 
in the British Museum. Mr. Palmer described the topography of this 
remote island in the South Pacific. It is only twelve miles in length by 
four in width, and lies in a part of the ocean far away from other islands, 
at a distance of two thousand miles from the coast of South America, 
d one thousand miles from the nearest Polynesian islands to the west. 
The island is entirely a wies formation, and presents numerous 
extinct craters, one of which yields the gray lava of which all the stone 
pered, set of people. They belong to the Polynesian race, h 
tradition of their immigrating from Opara at no very distant period 
interest attaching to sland was an ethnological one, and concerned 
e race who sculptured the vast quantity of stone images now existing 
in situ on stone platforms in various parts of the island, or inside large 
stone chambers or houses. The platforms, chambers, sculptures, and 
inut h 
e state 
itants knew nothing of the matter, that they were undoubtedly of e 
antiquity, and that it was probable they were executed by a race who h 
long since passed awa 
jn the discussion which followed Mr. Markham mentioned the fact of 
similar images having been found by the early tagen invaders in the 
cities ou the banks of Lake Titicaca, in Sonth Peru, and belonging to the 
Aymara nation. There existed, we is "i eror: Hal the 
Aymara images were profusely sculptured. Recently a stone platfor 
had been found in one of the fic Isl one thous miles to the 
o migrated acros 
Franks gave in detail his reasons for Mm that the ancient remains 
& 
