form it is a stick with a tooth or a piece of hard wood fastened with gum at one end. In its best form the projection for the reception of the hollow at the ends of the spear is carved out of the solid wood. In the southern parts of Australia the woomerah used by the natives is about twenty-seven inches in length, but in the north they employ for propelling the long stone-headed spears an instrument about forty-four inches in length.
This, like the boomerang, is peculiar to Australia, and yet, the Ounep (a cord with a loop) of New Caledonia, used for propelling the spear, is almost identical in principle. The Ounep answers precisely to the amentum of the ancients.
The Kur-ruk enables the black to throw a spear to a great distance and with precision. He can kill a kangaroo at a distance of eighty yards.
The throwing-sticks of the northern, eastern, and southern natives are long and narrow, and are often much ornamented. Those of the western tribes are broad canoe-shaped weapons, not marked in any way, but highly polished.
The Aboriginal is careful of his spears and equally regardful of the Kur-ruk. His spears are to him what the fowling-piece or the rifle is to the sportsman or the soldier amongst our own people. He procures game with his spear, and it is the weapon on which he relies when overtaken by an enemy. He polishes and sharpens his spears from time to time, and if the wooden "tooth" of the Kur-ruk be broken, he mends it by inserting perhaps the tooth of an enemy slain in battle in the place where the wooden "tooth" was. This is easily done when he has ready at hand the strong sinews, got from the tail of the kangaroo, and such an adhesive gum as that yielded by the grass-tree. When hunting he will carry several spears, and also when hiding in rushes or scrub in the hope of intercepting some enemy.
He carries his spears, when in ambush, not in his hands but between his toes. He carries or drags them after him, and with lightning speed he throws them either by hand alone or with his Kur-ruk. When an enemy is struck with the jagged spear in the chest or abdomen, he is disabled, but his life is not despaired of by his friends. They drag the spear forwards through his body, the sufferer or his friends plug the holes with grass, and very often in an incredibly short space of time the warrior again appears, ready to battle with his foes.
The spears used for taking fish remind one, as already stated, of those in use now and in ancient times. The bideut is the same as that employed by the Egyptians; and the account given by Dr. Gummow of the manner of fishing in the extensive flooded grounds that border the Murray is exactly like that of Wilkinson, and brings one again to the consideration of the similarities that exist between the customs of the savages of the South and those of races now scarcely otherwise known but by their monuments and their traditions.
The play boomerang (Wonguim); the war boomerang (Barngeet); and the wooden swords (Li-lil and Quirriang-an-wun) of the natives of the northern parts of Victoria are of uncommon interest; and it is believed that the facts now given will do away with much misapprehension that exists in the minds of many scientific men in Europe respecting the form and character of this class
