Mr. Ferguson on the Antiquity of the Kiliee or Boomerang. 47 



If any certainty could be had that the notices so far collected were all that 

 antiquity could furnish on the subject, a new and very wide field of speculation, 

 of perhaps a still more interesting character, would be opened, in the endeavour 

 to trace the international resemblances between those people known to have 

 used such weapons in the old world, and the tribes who still retain the use of 

 them in the new. Even on the scanty materials here brought together, there is, 

 however, sufficient to excite serious attention, in the fact, that amongst the ancient 

 nations using the Cateia and its cognate weapons, certain peculiar characteristics 

 are distinctly traceable, such as the prevalence among them, from the earliest 

 periods, of Amazonian habits, and their being in almost every instance of the white 

 variety of mankind, and of the Xanthoiis family of that variety, characteristics 

 which point, in a very marked manner, to an Indo-European origin. 



Now, there are in Australia two distinct races of men, one of which is clearly 

 of the white variety, as appears from the coloured drawings which accompany 

 M. Peron's Voyage to Van Dieman's Land and New South Wales, in 1824. 

 What, then, shall we say ? Has the European or Indo-European weapon, with 

 its characteristic name, been introduced into Australia by these lighter-com- 

 plexioned islanders ; and are these far-separated savages members of the same 

 great Japhetic stock of whom we have this testimony from the oldest and most 

 authentic of human records, *' By them were the isles of the Gentiles di- 

 vided." — ( Gen. c. X. v. 5.) 



