510 FIVE SHIELDS FROM XORTHERN QUEENSLAND, 



grooves. The weapon is composed of a light fig-tree wood, and 

 only weighs one pound eight ounces. It is twenty-five inches in 

 length, and eight inches in breadth. 



The fourth shield, for which I am indebted to Dr. J. C. Cox, is 

 an exceedingly fine weapon. It is from Angledool on the Narran 

 River. In this case the wood is of a more solid description than 

 that of the two preceding wooden examples, and is in consequence 

 heavier. It is also, as regards form, of the modified Goolraarry 

 type, with the hand-hole counter-sunk, convex on the outer face, 

 and flat inside, but ornamented only on the outer. The shield is 

 two feet long, and seven inches wide, with a thickness of about 

 three inches, and the weight three pounds eleven ounces. The 

 outer side is both incised and painted. We again meet with the 

 plain apices, cut off by incised cross-bars. The remainder of the 

 surface is wholly covered with fluctuating or serpentine longitu- 

 dinal grooves, meeting and retreating, and so enclosing a series of 

 liroad oval, or indefinitely rhomboidal figures, arranged in such a 

 manner that any five are in quincunx. The edges of the shield 

 bear longitudinal grooves only. A central longitudinal zone, of 

 al)out three inches, has been blackened, but the lateral zones, of 

 about two inches each, are coloured with red pigment, edged with 

 white lines, somewhat wavy, and broken up into eight or nine 

 squares on each zone by white cross-bars. 



The fifth and last shield is in some I'espects a very remarkal)le 

 one. It is the smallest, heaviest in proportion to its size, and 

 most convex on the outside, of the present collection, and from 

 being ornamented on the inside falls strictly within the Goolmarri/ 

 type. The sculpture is also of a very intei'esting and curious 

 kind. It is made of a heavy, close-grained wood, light in colour, 

 and is one foot eight inches long, five inches wide, about three 

 inches thick, seven and a half inches transversely across the 

 centre, or point of greatest convexity, and weighs three pounds 

 four ounces, with the usual counter-sunk hand-hole. The apices 

 in this shield are not delimited by incised cross-bars, but are 

 formed by bodily cutting down the convex sux'face. The latter, 

 as in Dr. Cox's shield, is subdivided into three longitudinal zones. 



