When Tasmania was first settled in 1803, the English found a Primitive race with an early Palaeolithic civilization living there. Within forty years these aborigines were practically exterminated, and a race, the study of which would have thrown much interesting light upon prehistoric man, was allowed to pass away with barely a comment, and with a singular lack of observation by the settlers.

There has always been considerable doubt whether this race expressed themselves pictorially before the advent of Europeans. Ling Roth, indeed, in The Aborzgines of Tasmania, after citing most of the evidence that exists, goes so far as to say that the question of the existence of drawings before the coming of Europeans ‘is practically an open one, for the evidence is not satisfactory’. But in the last three or four years the discovery of rock-carvings in two distinct and widely separated districts has produced evidence that is conclusive.