From the Mirrn-yong heaps on the shores of Cape Otway, Mr. Reginald A. F. Murray has sent me, together with other Aboriginal implements, two ancient stone axes. One, a fragment—much discolored, by having lain a great length of time in a mass of charcoal, burnt bones, and the like—is of black basalt. It is broken and disfigured, but one side of the cutting edge is well polished. The other—evidently, from its condition, from a Mirrn-yong heap, being blackened with charcoal—was found in a cart-rut. It is a good weapon, and the edge is very sharp. One side is nearly flat and slightly polished; the other side is convex. It is a dense black anamesite—intermediate between dolerite and basalt. Where the material for such axes was obtained one can but conjecture.
Mr. Geo. C. Darbyshire found at Audley, near Hamilton, in the western part of Victoria, a well-shaped, chipped, and partially ground axe of aphanite porphyry (felspar porphyrite). It is an unfinished implement, of a material rarely used.
In Section 3, Yarram Yarram, near the Jack Rivulet, in Gippsland, and on the site of an old native camp, Mr. John Ferres found an axe of aphanite. It is a rude hatchet with a heavy head. It has been made by chipping. The cutting edge is highly polished, but not sharp.
In the excavated gravel, near the site of the dam at Malmsbury, Mr. Davies found an axe of dense greenstone, with a ground cutting edge. The upper part is broken off. It is similar in shape to the axes used by the Loddon tribes. It is evidently an old implement, thrown away when it had become useless. One side is much flatter than the other, and it would appear to have been used in shaping and grinding other axes.
A large hatchet, weighing one pound seven and three-quarter ounces, was sent to me by Mr. John Filson, of Flemington. It was found at Kerang, on the Lower Loddon. It is formed of dense, hard, tough, nephritic greenstone. Its length is five and a half inches, and its breadth two and three-quarter inches. The corners are not rounded. The cutting edge is quite straight and well polished, and as keen as when it was finished. It is not as well shaped, but is as good an implement as any in my collection. The curves on each side of the straight cutting edge are not surpassed by the best American tools.
Mr. Clement Johnstone, Mining Surveyor, sent me what appears to be only a fragment of a stone axe of porphyry from Albury, on the River Murray. It has a well-rounded and exceedingly sharp edge. The polished surface at the edge is nowhere more than two-tenths of an inch in extent, and the greatest thickness of the stone is only three-tenths of an inch. One would suppose, at first sight, that the sides had been split off, but it may be a rare form adapted to some particular purpose.
Another axe—from Chiltern, a little lower down on the River Murray—was found by Mr. R. Arrowsmith, Mining Surveyor. It is, like that just described, a hard, dense, nearly black, siliceous porphyry. It is six inches in length, two inches and a quarter in breadth, and about six inches and a quarter in circumference. It is a very heavy and beautifully-finished implement. The polishing extends more than two inches from the cutting edge on each side, and the curves are symmetrical. Its weight is one pound seven and a quarter ounces.
