32 AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL STONE WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS, 



flesh-coloured quartzite resembling therein some spear-heads to be 

 noticed later on ; and another made of glass (PI. VI., fig. 1). Four 

 of the knives are mounted, and the fifth has been, as evinced by 

 the still adherent gum at the butt. Two of the mounted, and the 

 unmounted knife from " Northern Queensland," are flaked from 

 an impure, streaky, flint-like quartz, but which does not produce 

 so fine and cutting an edge as those formerly described. They 

 are, with one exception, of a rather different type to the latter. It 

 will be remembered that one of those in the Australian Museum 

 was described as more scalpriform than the others, thicker along 

 the back than at the cutting edge, the surface gradually sloping 

 off from the former to the latter, without any angularity. The 

 three knives in question are of this character, altogether stronger 

 and thicker than the Mulligan River Alika-knife. Evans figures! 

 such a knife in the Christy Collection from Queensland, with a 

 " thick somewhat rounded back, not unlike that of an ordinary 

 knife-blade, the butt being covered with fur and wound round 

 with string." 



The unmounted knife is four and a quarter inches long, and 

 three-quarters of an inch broad at the back, and is the widest. 

 The cutting edge, in two instances is sharp but uneven, in the 

 third thicker, and blunter. Both lateral surfaces in one are 

 smooth and unworked, but in the other two one face is facetted 

 by chipping. As regards the hafting, the butts of the two 

 mounted specimens have been surrounded with a fibre, the lower 

 end covered with a piece of canvas, or worn blanket, and a handle 

 so formed. Over the fore part of this, native string has been 

 wound, and this coated with one of the black gum preparations so 

 commonly used by the Aborigines. The string used on one of the 

 knives is made of yellow fibre, but round the other a much finer 

 string made of hair, perhaps human, has been wound alternately 

 with the fibre-string. In this instance the gum coating has been 

 continued up the broad back of the knife, nearly to its apex (PI. 

 vii., fig. 1), and gives one the idea of a protection to a fore-finger, 



T Ancient Stone Implements, &c, Gt. Brit., 1S72, p. 265, f. 198. 



