78 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [J AN. 30 



rouuded upper side (in cross section round on one side and 

 flat on the other) and always thickest in the middle ; a screw 

 shape warp or twist, and a wavy or deujied upper surface. 



When I reflect that it is only such a statement of fact, well 

 substantiated, that merits the interested attention of this society, 

 I feel that an apology is due at the outset for the entii-e absence 

 of corroborating formulae, and equations, from what I have to 

 present, especially as the somewhat astonishing literature of 

 the boomerang bristles with the pointed i^ersistence of the one 

 idea, that this dynamic mystery is a case for mathematical 

 formulae, if there ever was one. 



lu other words, it seems to be the conclusion by general con- 

 sent of most writers on the subject, that until the mathematician 

 allays the uneasy spirit of this "scientific vagabond," by the 

 weight of his rigid equations, it will remain to most people the 

 fascinating and unsolved riddle that it is. 



Therein I find my excuse for asking your attention to a brief 

 review of the literature of the boomerang, before turning my 

 slender little brood of naked facts over to cold, scientific 

 criticism. 



The latest publication of any moment that has come to my 

 notice is that in Scribner's Magazine for March, 1890, by Mr. 

 Horace Baker, who had made a practical study of the boome- 

 rang, and had learned directly from the natives how to make 

 and throw it successfully, an accomplishment of which the 

 encyclopaedias say, " Europeans find it next to impossible to 

 acquire." 



Mr. Baker calls it, " that dynamic curiosity which still remains 

 a puezle to the civilized world," but adds, "I believe it is 

 possible to make a boomerang by exact mathematical calcula- 

 tion, but yet I have never seen two exactly alike — of two appar- 

 ently alike in every particular, one rose buoyantly, while the 

 other fell dead." Thus the majority of writers upon this sub- 

 ject, seem to acquiesce in a sort of Pythagorean belief in the 

 mystical power of the science of numbers, to exi^lain the puz- 

 zling phenomenon of the boomerang's flight, though there are 

 notable exceptions. For instance : In 1837, Prof. McCuUagh, 

 of Edinburgh, read a paper on the subject before the Royal 

 Irish Academy, in which he pointedly said : "To calculate the 

 mutual action of the air and of a body to which is communicated 

 at the same time a rotary and a progressive motion is a problem 

 which far transcends tbe present powers of mechanics." In the 

 face of this early warning, the literature of the boomerang is a 

 long record of attempts to solve it by calculation. It seems to 

 warrant the expectation that of all valiant heroes, the mathe- 



