Eugène Dally, one of the progressives, started the discussion by adding some details about Billy and Jenny. Intelligence was the issue but first he noted that the man and the woman, not of the same tribe, could not stand each other. He went on: 'Their intelligence is very minimal. The mode of counting is of the most rudimentary. They count on their hands up to ten, then they begin again to go any further' (Topinard 1885:691). This pronouncement accords exactly with the stereotype of low Aboriginal intelligence and the scientific dictum promoted by Broca of small Aboriginal cranial capacity. Topinard responded with further information, piqued at the inference that after hours spent in the company of the three Australians he and Hamy had learnt nothing of their intelligence.^[20] Then follows the most telling comment of the whole record:

Here, Topinard not only told us something about the mental state of Billy and Jenny but revealed his own frustration and disquiet that he could get no response from Jenny. He then (1885:691-2) described Billy's recitation of the names of the cities he had visited while on tour (but demeaned this feat of memory as 'entirely automatic'), his lack of animation except when examining or throwing a boomerang or thinking about his lunch, and his vanity about the ivory stick in his nose, before returning to Jenny and her state:

Topinard did not condemn other races like Broca. His comments about Jenny reveal both his inability to transcend thinking about Aborigines in stereotypical terms and confusion provoked by the barriers to communication with another human subject whose emotions he sensed but could not grasp. If he could not reach her, then, as a dedicated empiricist, he would have to doubt his judgements about her.

No member of the Société had greater knowledge of the literature on Aboriginal people than Topinard and he kept up correspondence on the subject with French visitors to Australia. His first study of Aboriginal Australians was 'Etude sur les Tasmaniens' (1868), a study of the eight skulls from Tasmania then held in the Muséum de Paris. The Tasmanians were of interest to French anthropologists on a number of counts: the common belief that they had been exterminated by the British colonists; their epistemological status as one of the most remote human groups, both geographically and culturally, along with such people as the Fuegians and Eskimos; and their racial origins as connected or unconnected with mainland Aborigines. French anthropologists of this period, like other non-British European travellers and reporters (McKenna 2002:75), could be highly critical of the British colonial enterprise in terms of its treatment of indigenous people.

Topinard's 'Etude' starts on an elegiac note (1868:307): 'The newspapers have advised us that the last of the Tasmanians died five or six months ago and that, of these islanders, who numbered seven thousand when Van Diemen's Land was discovered, just one woman is now left; and I think that she may have just succumbed'. The scientist then stepped in quickly: 'It therefore seemed to me that the time had come to study the several skulls of this race that were held in the Museum of Paris, without concerning myself about what could have been written on this subject'. The 'Etude' is an assemblage of measurements of aspects of the skull, brain cavity, and facial structure, comparing the Tasmanian set of skulls with others, including those of Parisians and especially mainland Aborigines. It would be fatuous to dismiss the intellectual labour involved in such anthropometrical studies and Topinard's scientific integrity and ability strike me as impressive. In its osteological detail, the 'Etude' holds little meaning for non-experts and so my reading looks not so much to the information provided but rather to the manner of its presentation. Topinard emphasised its empirical base in a footnote:

But it was not a case of 'nothing more'. In a slide from fact to value, Topinard took the physical features of the skulls, which provided his data, as an index of the degree of racial superiority or inferiority. When he boasted (1868:319) about a plaster cast of an Aborigine as 'the superb trophy owned by the Society', we might ask him what that cast was 'saying' to him. Why was it 'superb', why was it a 'trophy'?

Topinard (1868:322, 325-6) concluded that the more pronounced prognathism of the Australian mainlanders, a putatively primitive feature, indicated that they were 'greatly inferior' to the Tasmanians and of lesser intellect and that the two groups constituted 'two distinct races'. The Tasmanians, he suggested, were midway between 'the black autochthonous race', 'highly dolichocephalic and prognathous', spread over different areas of the Pacific region, and another grouping who are 'sub-dolichocephalic and only slight prognathous', including the New Zealanders, northern Polynesians, and Tahitians. He remained undecided as to whether they represented the vestiges of an isolated autochthonous group or were the result of 'a crossing between the black autochthonous race and one of the invading groups of the great Polynesian family'. But he judged that the Tasmanians did not deserve to be classed with those like the Australians and the Hottentots who were 'truly inferior'.