OCCURRENCE OF A SUBMERGED FOREST. 183 
that Tasmania was already disunited from the mainland before 
the advent of man into that island, because the dingo did not find 
its way into Tasmania, and the dingo was probably introduced 
into Australia by man. At the present there are not only no 
dingoes in Tasmania, but not even the slightest vestige has been 
found of the remains of fossil dingo in Tasmania. The conclusion 
therefore, may be provisionally drawn, that Bass Strait was 
already in existence at the time of the advent of early man and 
his canine companion, the dingo, in Australia. He perhaps 
crossed into Tasmania by means of small canoes, but not judging 
the dingo to be an agreeable cabin companion left him behind. 
(2) The Tasmanian Aborigines never advanced beyond a Pale- 
olithic stage in the manufacture of their stone weapons, always 
producing a cutting edge by rough chipping, never by grinding. 
By far the larger number of the known stone implements of the 
Australian Aborigines are on the other hand of a Neolithic type, 
and mostly very neatly fashioned by grinding. This great differ- 
ence in the manufacture of their stone implements implies that 
the Tasmanian Aborigines must have been long isolated from the 
_ Australian Aborigines, : 
(3) The next piece of indirect evidence is based on the assump- 
tion, (a very probable one,) that the dingo was introduced into 
Australia by man. If this be the case, it follows that to whatever 
Period the date of the dingo can be pushed back, the date of man 
‘in Australia can be equally extended back into the past. Remains 
of dingo have been discovered in association with those of various : 
extinct animals in a cave at Gisborne, Mount Macedon, and also 
from Pliocene deposits near Colac, Victoria, as well as from the 
Wellington Cave bone breccias with Diprotodon in New South 
Wales. The complete skeleton of a dingo has also been discovered 
under a depth of sixty-two feet of basalt tuff from an extinct 
Voleano at Tower Hill, near Warnambool in Victoria. There is 
not even a legend among the Aborigines of man having seen alive 
any of the extinct animals, such as the Diprotodon, with which the 
remains of the dingo have been found to be associated at the above 
