WILD DYNAMITE 269 



been necessary to dispose of the illusion that they were 

 actually rejects from some old-time camp. Is it not 

 reasonable to suppose that the original design was copied 

 from this elemental model, as, in like manner the boome- 

 rang is traceable to a leaf? The pattern is so profoundly 

 persistent in the minds of the blacks of to-day, that in 

 fashioning a hook from a piece of straight wire they invari- 

 ably form a crescent, though the superiority of the shape 

 approved by civilisation must have been exemplified to 

 them times out of number. In this particular the blacks 

 seem unconsciously to follow the idea of their ancestors as 

 birds obey instinct in the building of nests and in migratory 

 flights. 



Piccaninnies at this date remind us of the genesis of the 

 boomerang as they sport with the sickle-shaped leaves (or 

 rather phyllodia) of the Acacia holcocarpa as with miniature 

 boomerangs. The piccaninny of the remote past chuckled 

 gleefully as the jerked leaf returned to it. As a boy he 

 fashioned a larger and permanent toy, surreptitiously using 

 his father's stone tomahawk and shell knife, while the old man 

 was after wallaby with a waddy. As a young man, hunting 

 or fighting, he found his boyish toy a very effective missile. 

 Even for a straight shot it had a longer range and far 

 higher velocity, with less strength expenditure, than the 

 waddy or nulla-nulla ; and its homing flight had practical 

 if not frequent uses. In his childhood, adolescence and 

 maturity the black of to-day so graphically summarises a 

 chapter in the history of his race that he who runs may read. 



In the origin of the boomerang and the shell fish-hook 

 we have instances, hardly to be doubted, of direct inspirations 

 from Nature, proofs of the art and the infinite patience with 

 which she sets her copies and expounds her texts. 



WILD DYNAMITE 



All the blacks of my acquaintance have had the rough 

 edges of savagedom worn down. Consequently I lay no 



