506 FIVE SHIELDS FROM NORTHEKN QUEENSLAND, 



ON FIVE INTERESTING SHIELDS FROM NORTHERN 



QUEENSLAND, WITH AN ENUMERATION OF THE 



FIGURED TYPES OF AUSTRALIAN SHIELDS. 



By R. Etheridge, Junr., Acting-Curator and Paleontolo- 

 gist, Australian Museum ; and Paleontologist and 

 Librarian, Geological Survey of N. S. Wales. 



(Plates xxxiii-xxxviii.) 



It affords me much pleasure to lay before the Society descrip- 

 tions of two very curious shields from the Collection of Mr. Harry 

 Stockdale, of Sydney, to whom my thanks are due for the 

 opportunity of so doing, and three derived from other sources. 



The first to be noticed is a wooden shield from Peak Downs, 

 Central Queensland, the second, a weapon made from the carapace 

 of a turtle, both being a modification of the type, or form, of 

 the Goohnarry shield of the Queensland Blacks. The latter is 

 one of the cleverest adaptions of a natural object to form a 

 weapon of offence or defence that has yet come under my notice 

 from any part of Australia. It was obtained by Mr. Stockdale 

 in the Cooktown District of North-East Queensland. 



The wooden shield is more oval, wider, and less elongate in its 

 general proportions than the typical form of the Goolriinr'y 

 figured by the late Mr. R. Brough Smyth,* but like the latter, 

 possesses the distinctive feature of being carved on both aspects 

 — back and front — an unusual practice amongst the Australian 

 Aborigines, except in the northern portions of the Continent. It 

 is a solid serviceable weapon, elongately-oval in shape, with an 

 appreciable degree of thickness, and weighs three pounds twelve 

 ounces. The length is twenty-one and a half inches and the 



* Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. p. 334, f. 138. 



