available to him. Some of the axes are merely large pebbles, sharpened and polished at one end; others are evidently from a quarry, and made by blows given with skill and precision, so as to knock off flakes one by one until a scalpriform implement was obtained. The end of the stone was ground, the handle fitted to it, and the axe was then ready for use. Some of the axes made of sandstone appear to have been formed by grinding only.
In addition to the ordinary tomahawk, the natives of some parts of Victoria had large stone axes made of basaltic rock, which were used for splitting trees. One in my possession is eight inches in length, five inches in breadth, and two inches in thickness. It weighs four pounds eight and a half ounces. Implements of this size are very rare. One was found in trenching a garden at Ballarat by Mr. Samuel Hutson, on the 16th March 1864. It is described and figured in Dicker's Mining Record. Its length was eight inches, its largest diameter a little under four inches, and its weight about five pounds avoirdupois. Like that in my collection, it was of basaltic rock, and grooved for receiving the wooden handle.
It is scarcely possible to disturb any large area of the natural surface in Victoria without lighting on some of these weapons. In ploughing the ground they are often found and cast aside. In a small garden on the banks of the River Powlett in the County of Mornington, on the edge of the dense forest, four tomahawks were discovered; and indeed many of the old implements in my collection were got in digging or ploughing. And all over the country flakes of black basalt used for cleaning skins and for fitting into spear-heads are abundant. I have in some places collected in half an hour, from an old Mirrn-yong or midden near the sea-coast, as many small flakes (broken off in making tomahawks) as would fill a pint measure. Mr. Geo. H. F. Ulrich found a great number when engaged in making geological surveys. He says:—
"During the prosecution of the Geological Survey over the Castlemaine, Yandoit, and Mount Tarrangower districts, my attention was frequently attracted by the occurrence on the surface of small angular chips of a dense black rock that very much resembled Lydian stone, but on closer examination proved to be basalt.[1] The only place where this peculiar dense variety of
- ↑ This black, very compact, dense, hard, rather brittle basalt, with a flat conchoidal fracture, resembling Lydian stone, but containing minute grains of olivine porphyritically dispersed, has been analysed by Mr. Cosmo Newbery, with the following results—5 per cent. soluble in hydrochloric acid:—
Soluble portion. Insoluble portion. Silica 38·40 63·39 Alumina 38·58 16·11 Manganese protoxide trace 1·01 Iron sesquioxide 18·07 10·03 Lime 7·12 5·26 Magnesia trace 3·41 Potash
Soda– 2·21 Titanic acid – 0·63 Water 1·43 – Oxide of copper – trace
100·00 102·05
