Item 03: 'The Aborigines of Australia. A Lecture by Wm. Ridley M.A.', 14 September 1864. - Page 17

destroyed in the race the capacity of rising to a nobler life.

But to return to the period of their first arrival in this land

- when the black man came to Australia, he found

abundance of game.   The Kangaroo, the emu, and  

the [?opossum] were here long before him.   Immense

flights of pigeons incited him to devise the boomerang,

and along the coasts and the rivers fish in  

great multitudes furnished motives for perpetuating

the art of net making.   It has been thought by

geologists that the dingo, now so familiar to all

travellers in the Bush, was brought over with the  

first men that landed on these shores.   It is

certain that marsupian animals and birds of

various form and size inhabited Australia  ^ very long before

the dog;   and there is better ground than many

received legends can boast for the supposition  that

man introduced the canine race as his servants

in the chase and  and  these servants breaking away from

thier masters have become the pests of the  

pastoral occupiers, and aroused the inventive