The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson.

  • Henry Ling Roth
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    41/402 (page 9)
    (Marion, p. 29). Dr. Knox (Races of Men, Lond., 1850, p. 286) says: “ The reproductive organs in the Tasmanians are said to be quite peculiar in men and women. He gives no authority, he makes no distinction between Australians and Tasmanians. In describing an interview with four- teen of the Aborigines, Peron says, “The majority of them were young men of about sixteen to twenty-five years of age ; two or three appeared to be thirty to thirty-five years old ; one alone, older than the rest, appeared to be fifty to fifty-five years of age. . . Generally all the individuals were of a stature proportionate to their age. Among those arrived at manhood there was one who was not less than 1 metre 786 millimetres (5 feet io| inches), but he was much thinner and slimmer than his fellows. All the others were from 1 metre 678 millimetres to 732 millimetres (5 feet 6 to 8 inches) in height. One of them . . . was a young man, twenty-four to twenty-five years of age, called Bara-Ourou, with a much finer constitution than the others, although spoilt by the same constitutional defect common to all his race, that is to say, with a well-developed head, ample and fleshy shoulders, broad chest, and very muscular buttocks, all his extremities were slender and weak, particularly his legs; his stomach* also, proportionately, was much too big” (ch. xiii. p 280). One man killed by Marion’s party was five feet three inches in height! (Marion, p. 31). They are rather below the average stature of Europeans. . . . Both sexes are stout and their limbs well-propor- tioned (Walker p. 97). Near Port Davey, Kelly (p. 7) met some natives “ six feet high, their stomachs very large, legs and arms very thin ” ; at Retreat River some men were “ six feet high and very stout made ” (p. 8) ; at Cape Grim he says he measured a man six feet seven inches high (p. xo). “ Robinson found some at Port Davey about six feet. In 1819, a man was killed six feet two inches high. Dr. Story informs me that ‘ the general size of the men was from five feet two inches to five feet five inches; the women in proportion to the men, of course smaller.’ He adds, ‘ Balawenna was a fine athletic man, more than six feet. His wife was in proportion’” (Bonwick, p. 119.) Laplace (III. ch. xviii. p. 202) deemed the women as repulsive [sfr] in physique as the men, and Lloyd (pp. 43-44) speaks of their attenuated frames as “comparable only to animated skeletons. The spinsters, how- ever, . . . presented a marked and pleasing contrast, . . . possessing a tolerable amount of rounded limb . . . and sleekness of person.” Widow- son considered the women better formed than the men (p. 187). Of two women Peron writes (ch. xii. pp. 222-223): “The former appeared to be forty years of age, and the large folds of the skin of her stomach showed unmistakeably that she had been the mother of several children. . . . The young woman of twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age, had a fairly robust constitution, . . . her breast, already slightly withered, appeared nevertheless fairly well formed. Of a party of some twenty aboriginal females he writes (ch. xii. p. 252) : “ Their forms were generally thin and withered, their breasts long and hanging; in a word, all the details of their physical constitution were repulsive. One must, however, except * Probably from the indigestable food such as fern roots, &c. t Old French measure.