12 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



The spear of the native Australian is commonly, and more especially as used 

 for striking fish, simply a long pointed stick of hardened wood. For the larger 

 terrestrial game and for conflict with his fellow man, however, its efficiency is usually 

 increased by the addition of a bone barb or trenchant spear-head manufactured out of 

 chert, quartz or other suitably hard stone, which is affixed to the shaft by means of 

 a strong, resinous gum derived from the bruised blades and stalks of the spinifex 

 grass, Triodia irritans. Since coming in contact with European civilisation, the natives 

 have shown themselves to be great adepts at turning to account all materials intro- 

 duced by the settlers, suited to their simple needs. In this manner' the discarded 

 glass bottles of manifold description which bestrew the ground like the leaves in 

 the famed Valley of Vallombrosa, around every North Australian township, and 

 which, in a less marked degree, mark the track of the prospector, have proved a 

 veritable God-send to the native. Out of this most unpromising material he will 

 manufacture spear-heads, pointed like a needle, and of the most exquisite workman- 

 ship.* An abnormally elongated example of one of these spear-heads, manufactured by 

 a Kimberley native, with the view rather of demonstrating the workman's skill than 

 for practical use, is reproduced from a photograph of the natural size in Plate I., 

 Fig. 3. Opposite to this, fig. 4, is one of more normal dimensions, blunted by use, 

 and attached to the broken spear-haft by the customary spinifex-gum cement. 

 Figures 5 and 6 represent smaller sized spear-heads manufactured out of white quartz, 

 which are now comparatively rare. The needle-like sharpness of the point in fig. 5 

 is particularly well defined. 



In addition to bottles, the insulating glasses attached to the telegraph posts 

 have unfortunately been found by the Kimberley natives to be equally efficacious for 

 the manufacture of spear-heads, and are not unfrequently appropriated for this 

 purpose in the sparsely settled districts, to the great discomfiture of the telegraph 

 officials. The method by which these glass and quartz spear-heads are manufactured 

 presents points of interest. The flaking off of the superfluous surfaces is not 

 accomplished, as might be imagined, by direct percussion, but by a skilfully applied 

 pressing or gouging action with the aid of another suitably shaped fragment of hard 

 stone, or, if the native can obtain it, a piece of iron. The rough shaping of the 



* The interesting circumstance has been related to the author by Mr. Henry Balfour, the accomplished 

 Curator of the Oxford University Museum, that the Fuegian Natives of Terra del Fuego and the mainland 

 shores of the Magellan Straits are in the habit of utilising discarded bottles in a closely identical manner for 

 the manufacture of their arrow-heads. 



