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The series of papers contained in this volume will not, it is hoped, prove the least appropriate of the publications which have marked the Centenary of Australian colonization. They originally appeared in the Sydney Empire, in 1853-4, of which journal the present Premier of New South Wales, Sir Henry Parkes, was then proprietor and editor. No doubt it was the author's intention to issue them in a collected shape. Whatever plans he may have formed in that respect were, however, cut short by his early death, which event took place somewhat suddenly, in London, while the sheets of his well-known "History of New South Wales" were passing through the press. That work has since taken its place as a standard authority on the subject with which it deals. Mr. Flanagan was only thirty-three when he died, and quite a young man—he was under twenty-five—when his "Studies on the Aborigines" were written.

It may be mentioned that the idea of the history was suggested to him in the course of his researches concerning the first possessors of the soil. The result of his labours in the latter direction may, therefore,