BY R. ETHERIDGE, JUNR 



281 



Mr. Gibney says — " The string should be of medium thickness, 

 firmly twisted but not stiff. Take a piece of this, a little over a 

 foot in length, and make a knot at one extremity, and your 

 throwing apparatus is ready. When you wish to make a throw, 

 twist the knotted end of your string round the wand, some 

 inches from the end, winding some of the other end of the string 

 round your hand until the string being tight, you can hold the 

 wand about the middle. By adjusting the string, as shown in 

 fig. 3,* placing the long end over the knot, you will make it grip 

 the wand perfectly tightly as long as you keep the string taut. 

 But the moment it is slackened, as it is when that part comes 

 over your hand in its discharge, it comes undone and leaves the 

 wand of itself. The string acts the part of the throwing stick." 



I now pass on to a subject of equal importance, but of a rather 

 speculative nature, and would guard the reader against accepting 

 the following suggestion as anything more than a statement of 

 opinion, as I am not in possession of any positive evidence to 

 support it. Three spears in the Museum Collection, made of a 

 fine palm wood and beautifully ornamented towards the butts 

 with string lashing, are provided at or about the point of equi- 

 poise with a number of free hanging strings (figs. 16-18), termin- 

 ating in small tassels. The spears are respectively seven and a 

 half feet and six and a half feet long, and the longer are butted 

 with the tibias of the Island Cassowary or Mooruk {Gasuarius 

 Bennettii, Gould); the shorter one is all wood. The tassel strings 

 are three, four and five inches long, but the first has obviously 

 been much worn. Above the butts all three spears are elegantly 

 ornamented with string lacing, which in each case projects 

 forward in two sharp points, one on either side of a spear, with 

 A'-shaped indents between. These portions are all highly ruddled. 

 Mr. J. Edge-Partington figures! one of these spears with a tassel, 

 purporting to come from New Britain, but in all probability it is 

 from the same neighbourhood as the present weapons. He does 



* Fig. 15 ot this Paper. 

 t Album, loc. dt., Ser. 1, t. 252, f. 9. 



