of Port Phillip , N. S. Wales. 
409 
salt have been gathered from the evaporated surface of several of 
these natural manufactories. The best description of this article 
is procured from Lake Bolack, to the northwest of Karangamite, 
whence many hundred tons have already been procured, which 
have been extensively applied to the curing of meat and other 
purposes. 
The ground or bottom of these lakes is generally, or perhaps 
invariably, a blueish clayey substance, strongly impregnated with 
salt. I believe that, invariably, their locality or neighbourhood 
bear the impress of volcanic action. Some are partially sur¬ 
rounded with a bank, like an escarpment; others have a remark¬ 
ably circular appearance with perpendicular sides, and sunk 
several feet below the surface of the ground. One, near Lake 
Colac, above a mile in circumference, unites in itself all these 
features, and is almost entirely surrounded with a grassy ridge, 
twenty or thirty feet in height, which shallows out before reaching 
the margin of the lake, leaving an intermediate plain of twenty to 
fifty yards in width. These circumstances, and the resemblance 
of the clayey substance that is found in them, to what is seen at 
the bottom of undoubted craters, suggest the idea that the salt 
lakes were themselves either regular craters, or the site of subter¬ 
ranean commotions. 
Art. XX. —On the Aborigines of Van Diemen s Land. By 
R. H. Davies, Esq. 
[The British Association for the Advancement of Science having 
published a series of queries respecting the human race, the 
writer was favoured with a copy, and a request that as far as he 
was enabled he would answer such of them as bore upon the 
aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land. The following paper is the 
result; but, to avoid repetitions, modified so as to make it a 
continuous narrative, instead of a series of answers. The writer 
has endeavoured, as much as possible, to confine himself to the 
results of his own observation, together with such authority as 
he deemed he could depend upon.] 
The aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land are a full average height, 
very sinewy and wirey. Stout muscular men occur but rarely ; 
this is in accordance with their habits, in which activity rather 
2 g 
VOL. II. NO. XI. 
