BLACK AND WHITE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 85, 20 October 1928, Page 20

BLACK AND WHITE

: ' MBEGING'OP.AUSTBALIAN ■[':'■:. ' ;..,,;;.,..; .Thc;:aboriginesof eastern New South Wales "wore the first'to be brought "into contact with white civilisation, writes Professor Griffith Taylor, University of '■Sydney, in "Pacific. Affairs.?' Their ■old culture disappeared, rapidly,, and ' by: the time that'the scientific study of ; ethnology began in: Australia, "the -investigators naturally devoted themselves to the loss contaminated races of tho interior. As regards , hybridism, however, these tribes offer perhaps the best material to-day in.the whole of Australia. The following tablG shows how the proportion of full-bloods to half-casteS- has altered' since 1882:—,' ; Full Half ProporBlood. Cast.Ci tion. 1882. .. 6300 ':, 2300 3.1 1892 . ■'• .. 4000- .■...3000 .4.3 i 1902 . .. 2900 ".'- 4000 • 3.4 1912 .. 1800 ' ' 5000 ■•■-'1.3 11922 .. 1000. 6000 1.6. ">,■ In 1895 the two ■ classes were, about equal. Now the. half-castes are six. times as numerous. If we may judge from the extinction curve of the Tasmanian aborigines .(who died out in .1877),-the fullrtloods in New South. Wales will have vanished in fifty years. The above data illustrates; what happens when any. inferior race is surrounded by large..numbers, of higher, peoples. They arc not exterminated, they do not die oiit, but they ... become merged in the superior . stock. ' . Therate of merging is dependant, to .a considerable degree on the density, of the white population. . The belt of dense, white population runs, from Albury to Sydney and thpnee up to tismore. There are ten half-castes to .one fullblood near Sydney; five., to one. near Albury; and foni- lo one on .tlic north coast.. Inland the ..proportion is, about two to one, while iicros3,the Darling— where there is'jcry. little, white popu-, lation —the proportion is one to one. ...