226 SAVAGE WEAPONS AT THE CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION. 



has a movement of translation in a horizontal plane. It is also a hack- 

 ing hand-to-hand weapon. Somewhat similar weapons with two blades 

 arc found in upper Sennaar and Central Soudan, and are used by the 

 Fans. The keerie or knobbed throwing-stick of the Kafirs has been 

 already described. The Ms&m is the curved throwing-stick of another 



Fig. 26. — Niam-niam hurlinq-weapons (t^umbash). 



African tribe : the iron hungamunga 3 * of the Tibbus and of Darfur is also 

 a hurling weapon. 35 



It would be singular, indeed, if a cudgel for throwing at game were 

 found in but one part of the world, and at but one period ; but the dis- 

 covery of the Australian boomerang, the most curious of its class, has 

 directed attention to what might otherwise have been passed over as 

 unimportant. The Egyptian and Assyrian monuments have been con- 

 sulted, and in each ease the carved stick has been noticed in the hands 

 of bird-catchers or hunters. An ancient throwing-stick about eighteen 

 inches long is in the Abbott Egyptian collection of the New York His- 

 torical Society. A short, crooked stick [pedum) was used by the Romans 

 to throw at hares, and centaurs are represented with a short pedum 

 (Xfytopokov) in the other. 



In coming to Australia we reach a people living in an almost primi- 

 tive condition, so low, ill formed, and ignorant that their name has be- 

 come a synonym for imbecility. Here, however, the throwing-stick has 

 attained its highest development. The maximum of improvement has 



M Illustrated in the discussion on the boomerang. Smith. "Aber. Victoria,'' 321 et 

 seq. 



K TyliT's " Early History of Mankind," 175-6. Bee also paper by Ferguson in Trans. 

 E. I. A. Dublin, 1843, vol. xix. Paper byW. Cooke Taylor. Tbe Nat. Hist. Soc. 

 London, 1840, vol. i. page 205; Eyre, vol. ii,p.303j Klemm, C. G. vol. i, p. 316, plate vii. 



