AN ACTINOCERAS FROM N."W. AUSTRALIA — ETnERIDGE, 7 



of Aboriginal spears, it is in one piece, and not with the head 

 separately formed, and lashed or ceoiented on. I take it to be a 

 hand-thrown weapon, and not propelled with the assistance of a 

 womerah. The head of the spear, for eight and a-half inches 

 from the apex, is blackened, then five alternating white and black 

 bands follow occupying in the aggregate one foot, three of the 

 bands white and two black. From this point downwards, to 

 within nine inches of the proximal end, are six serpentine, but not 

 encircling, continuous grooves, each bearing a series of close, back- 

 wardly directed, incised barbs, or teeth, and rendered prominent 

 by having been coloured black. tSpears similarly banded at the 

 apex have been figured before, but neither Angas, Eyre, Wood, 

 Smyth, or Knight, in their respective works, have given an 

 illustration of one similarly ornamented with incised sculpture or 

 decoration. With the exception of this feature, it is one of the 

 type of such simple spears as the Uicinda, of the Murray River,* 

 or the Koy-yu7i.j 3Ir. E. M. Curr, however, states; that the 

 Blacks of Hinchinbrook Island, and the adjacent mainland used 

 carved spears, but he does not give particulars. 



Smyth figures a simple spear with the distal end, or apex, 

 segmented by white and black bands from West Australia,§ but 

 otherwise it completely differs from the present weapon. 



An ACTINOCERAS from NORTH-WEST AUSTRALIA. 



By R. Ethekidge, Junk., Curator. 



(Plate iii.) 



I am not aware that this interesting genus has so far been 

 recorded from the Carboniferous rocks of West Australia. A 

 rather fine example exists in our collection from the Lennard 



* Angas ; S. Australia Illustrated, 1846, t. 51, f . 34. 

 t Smyth ; Aborigines of Victoria, i., 1878, p. 307, f. 83. 

 J Australian Race, ii., 18SG, p. 418. 

 § Smyth; loc. cit, p. 337, f. 143. 



