Col. A. Lane Fox, at a meeting of the British Association, in August 1872, in his capacity as President, in the Anthropological Section, made some observations on the boomerang (not the Barn-geet but the Wonguim) which it appears to me are founded on the examination of a number of weapons called by Europeans boomerangs, instruments, as I have elsewhere stated, altogether different from the missile which returns to the thrower. He said:—"The earliest inhabitants of the globe, as they spread themselves over the earth, would carry with them the rudiments of culture which they possessed, and we should naturally expect to find that the most primitive arts were, in the first instance, the most widely disseminated. Amongst the primeval weapons of the Australians I have traced the boomerang, and the rudimentary parrying shield—which latter is especially a primitive implement—to the Dravidian races of the Indian peninsula and to the ancient Egyptians, and although this is not a circumstance to be relied on by itself, it is worthy of careful attention in connection with the circumstance that these races have all been traced by Professor Huxley to the Australoid stock, and that a connection between the Australian and Dravidian languages has been stated to exist by Mr. Morris, the Rev. R. Caldwell, Dr. Bleek, and others. And here I must ask for one moment to repeat the reply which I have elsewhere given to the objection which has been made to my including these weapons under the same class, 'that the Dravidian boomerang does not return like the Australian weapon.' The return flight is not a matter of such primary importance as to constitute a generic difference, if I may use the expression; the utility of the return flight has been greatly exaggerated; it is owing simply to the comparative thinness and lightness of the Australian weapon. All who have witnessed its employment by the natives concur in saying that it has a random range in its return flight. Any one who will take the trouble to practise with the different forms of this weapon will perceive that the essential principle of the boomerang, call it by whatever name you please, consists in its bent and flat form, by means of which it can be thrown with a rotatory movement, thereby increasing the range and flatness of the trajectory. I have practised with the boomerangs of different nations. I made a fac-simile of the Egyptian boomerang in the British Museum, and practised with it for some time upon Wormwood Scrubs, and I found that in time I could increase the range from fifty to one hundred paces, which is much further than I could throw an ordinary stick of the same size with accuracy. I also succeeded in at last obtaining a slight return of flight; in fact, it flies better than many Australian boomerangs, for they vary considerably in size, weight, and form, and many will not return when thrown. The efficacy of the boomerang consists entirely in the rotation, by means of which it sails up to a bird upon the wing and knocks it down with its rotating arms; very few of them have any twist in their construction. The stories about hitting an object with accuracy behind the thrower are nursery tales; but a boomerang when thrown over a river or swamp will return and be saved. . . . . To deny the affinity of the Australian and Dravidian or Egyptian boomerang on account of the absence of a return flight, would be the same as denying the affinity of
