quently another child as dark as herself, and without question the child of a black man." He then proceeds to philosophize upon the subject, saying, "Many of these poor black women used to prostitute themselves for clothes, tobacco, or 'white money,' and, in such cases, I question whether they would bear children any more than white prostitutes."
There is another side of this question. The female is not alone in defective virility. A New Zealand writer says that a "full quiver is the ordinary result of mixed marriages." There never was a difficulty about children with Whites, even when black children in Tasmania were almost unknown. A case in Victoria may bear upon the subject. Seventeen years ago I knew a native who was knocking about the settled districts, having a wife, but being childless. Then he was often intoxicated. About a year since I saw him healthy and happy. He was under good influence, had kept away from town life, and was then working quietly upon his little bit of ground. He had regained his vigour, and with great glee held up a fine black child, that he took from its black mother, and claimed for his own.
Although the destruction in Tasmania was not so awful in magnitude as on the continent, where the Rev. L. E. Threlkeld says, "Of one large tribe in the interior four years since there were 164 persons, now there are only three individuals alive,"—yet the account of Flinders Island experience is a sad one of decline. Surgeon Allen in 1837 wrote from Flinders: "It is almost certain that these people will become extinct in a few years." It is sickening to read such extracts as these from the medical reports:—
The decline of our Aborigines would be explained by Mr. Brace, in his ethnological work, as proceeding "from the wear
