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 [., 
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. 
