hornstone, with a splintery fracture. It appears to have been shaped by well-directed blows. It has a keen, well-polished cutting edge. The stone is five inches in length, two in breadth, and about three-quarters of an inch in thickness. The wooden handle is fifteen inches in length, and is well and firmly fixed to the stone. Though the gum used in fixing the head to the handle is now cracked and crumbling, the union is perfect, the wood having been originally well heated and moistened and made to grasp the stone closely. The handle, near the head, is strongly bound with the fibres of the stringybark. The weight of this implement is thirteen and a half ounces.
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| FIG. 177.—(Scale ¼.) |
In Fig. 177 is shown a well-made tomahawk from Lake Tyers in Gippsland. The stone is greenstone (dense diorite), of very even texture, and appears to have been taken nearly in the form in which it is seen now from a river-bed. The cutting edge has been ground and polished, but in other respects it has not been altered. It is six inches in length, two and a half inches in breadth, and one inch in thickness. The wooden handle is fifteen inches in length; and the weight of the whole is one pound five and a quarter ounces. As the handle could not be made to embrace the stone so closely as to prevent some movement, pieces of stringybark have been inserted between the wood and the stone, and near the head the handle is bound with the sinews of some animal. No gum was used in effecting a junction.
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| FIG. 178.—(Scale ¼.) |
Another tomahawk from Lake Tyers (Fig. 178) is also an excellent implement. The stone is a hard metamorphic schist, very dense and heavy. It is more or less polished all over the surface, and it is now difficult to say whether it was found originally nearly in the shape in which we see it or was wrought into form by hand. It has a good cutting edge, and the curves
