on the other, and that on these voyages, according to my native informant, they obtain wives from the Australian mainland and the New Guinea Islands.
I am therefore led to believe that the Australian ancestors as well as Tasmanians must be held to have reached this continent by some land connection, or, at least, a land connection so nearly complete that the breaks in it might be crossed in vessels no better than the bark canoe of the present time.
If these conclusions are well founded, there arise certain questions which demand answers. What evidence is there of a former land connection between Australia and other lands to the north or north-west, and between Australia and Tasmania within the limit of time fixed by the probable existence of man?
A reply to these questions can only be given by the sciences of physical geography and geology, and the time limit restricts the inquiry to those later Tertiary or Post-Tertiary lands from whence such migrations might have proceeded.
Thus their direction is indicated as having been probably from lands lying to the north or north-west of Australia.
Dr. Wallace, in his classical work on The Malay Archipelago,[1] directed attention to several matters bearing upon this question, which still remain as significant as when he stated them in 1869.
A deep but narrow sea channel, being part of what is now known as "Wallace's Line," separates areas of shallow seas bordered by great ocean depths,[2] while the boundaries of the shallow seas indicate the former extension on the one side of the Austral and on the other of the Asiatic continent.
The chain of islands which extends from the Malay Peninsula towards Australia, ending with Timor, when considered in connection with the boundaries of the shallow sea, represents a former continental extension, probably only broken by the channel between Bali and Lombok,[3] and a channel
