BY R. ETHERIDGE, JDN. 261 



tomahawk, which is referred to by Mr. C. S. Wilkinson* in the 

 following words : — " No human remains have yet been found with 

 the bones of the extinct animals, but a stone hatchet has been 

 obtained on the Bodalla estate, in the alluvium, at a depth of 

 14 feet from the surface." 



The next case came under the personal observation of the 

 Government Geologist and the writer. Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, 

 when making a geological survey of the Cape Otway coast, in 

 Victoria, in 1864, found in the sand dunes, two miles east of the 

 Cape Otway light-house, flint chips, a sharpened stone tomahawk, 

 and several bone " needles." The writer, a year or two later, 

 obtained near the same locality a similar bone spike in a mixture 

 of beach material, pebbles, and broken shells resting on the 

 Mesozoic Carbonaceous Sandstone forming the high cliffs of 

 the Cape, and apparently intermediate between that deposit and 

 the overlying dunes. f " Remains of this nature, lying as they 

 did beneath sand dunes at least two hundred feet high, must have 

 been of great antiquity ."| 



The method employed by the aboriginals to sharpen their stone 

 tomahawks is too well known to need description, but the follow- 

 ing curious passage occurs in Bennett's " History of Australian 

 Discovery and Civilisation : § — " In sinking wells and other 

 excavations in the Hunter Valley, flat rocks with these axe-marks 

 on their surfaces have been discovered at the depth of thirty feet 

 or more below the present surface level, and covered with a drift 

 or alluvium which in all probability must have taken thousands 

 of years to accumulate." 



Lastly, the late Mr. James Bon wick states that at Ballarat a 

 basaltic " stone weapon, or tool-head, was unearthed during the 



* " Notes on the Geology of New South Wales " (Dept. Mines, Sydney), 

 1887, p. 90 (4to, Sydney, 1887, Government Printer, 11a 64-87). 

 t Trans. R. Soc. Vict. 1876, xii. p. 3. 

 X Records Geol. Survey, N. S. Wales, 1889, I. pt. 1, p. 15. 



§ P. 263 fSvo, Sydney, 1867). 

 18 



