144 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION E. 
Tench also bears testimony to the delineations of figures of men and 
birds cut on the rocks at these places. At Middle Head a flat rock 
was covered with representations of whales, sharks, and other fish ; 
one of the whales was at least 30 feet long. A flat rock on Sydney 
Common was covered with figures of kangaroos, opossums, fish, 
boomerangs, and other weapons. 
Ideographic rock -carvings, the work of the aborigines, exist near 
Manly, of which the following descriptions are taken from the 
“Records of the Geological Surveys of New South Wales, 1890” : — 
1, a largo fish 24 feet long; 2, another fish lying at right angles 
to No. 1 ; 3, an extraordinary fish, sub-parallel to fig. 2, 16 feet 9 
inches in length (within its outline is that of a man) ; 4, a shield 
of the usual type; 5, a shield with expanded .apices, gathered or 
puckered together ; 6, a rude figure of a kangaroo, seven feet in 
height ; 7, a well-executed figure of a smaller kangaroo ; 8, figure of a 
man ; 9, a group of objects in a depression on the sandstone table — 
a fish (probably a hammer-headed shark) five feet long, a fish with the 
head marked off by a diagonal line, a fish with a wide gape, and a body 
(perhaps intended for a flying squirrel). 
Captain Stokes, whilst surveying the north-west seaboard in 
H.M.S. “ Beagle,” in 1840, in those large and numerous clusters of 
islands called “ Dam pier’s Archipelago,” discovered some carvings on 
Depuch Island. The group of islands, of which this is one, is so 
connected with the main by extensive sandbanks, that at low water it is 
possible to walk across to them. The natives enjoy the pleasure of 
delineating the various objects that attract their attention — viz., 
human figures, animals, birds, weapons, and domestic implements 
{Plate O). “ 1, a goose ; 2. a beetle ; 3, a fish with a young moon just 
over it ; 4, a native armed with spear and shield ; 5, a duck or a gull; 
6, a native building a hut ; 7, a shark and pilot fish ; 8, a corroboree or 
native dance, a wheel-like object. (During the corroboree the ground is 
literally beaten hard by the natives, indeed it is so beaten down that 
the grass cannot spring through it, and it remains for a long time 
untouched by herbage of any kind.) 9, a native dog; 10, a crab ; 11, 
a kangaroo ; and 12 appears to be a bird of prey which has seized upon 
a kangaroo rat.” 
The most remarkable of these ideographs is one discovered by 
Mr. Arthur John Giles at the junction of Sullivan’s Creek with the 
Rinke River, in the centre of Australia. This is a smooth-faced rock, 
portion of a rocky cliff about 4o feet high, composed of hard meta- 
morphic slate {Plate P). The lower portion of the sculptured face 
has been worn and broken away, forming a sort of cave ; from the level 
bank of the creek to the lower edge of the sculptured rock is about 
15 feet. The perpendicular lines are cut out, forming semicircular 
grooves about 1J- inches in diameter, cut in to a depth of nearly i inch ; 
all the remaining figures are carved into the solid rock to a depth of 
about i inch. The right-hand portion has been broken away by storms 
and other causes. The lowest portion is far above flood influence now, 
and a person could not gain access to it without a ladder. None of 
the natives can give any information respecting it. It must neces- 
sarily have been done at some very remote period of time, as the 
wearing away of the hard rock to form the large cavity underneath 
must have taken long years to accomplish ; coupled with this is the 
