Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/63

58 boomerang is merely a matter of accident, therefore out of five hundred made, there will perhaps not be half-a-dozen possessing the true or scientific curve necessary to ensure the retrograde motion of the missile after it has been propelled to a certain distance. From an aboriginal point of view, however, the lack of the power of retrogression in the missile is not objected to, but quite the contrary, inasmuch as this quality, so much admired by Europeans, renders it altogether useless, either in their daily hunting excursions or in their puny warfare. What they require in this weapon is a capacity for great velocity, with but a minimum expenditure of propulsive power; and any piece of wood of a handy size, flattened on one side, and very slightly convex on the other, having the shape of a parabola, possesses the required merit.

The reason why any two boomerangs are never seen with precisely the same curve is simple enough. These missiles, are always made from branches, or roots having natural curves, and there are never two curves in nature exactly alike. When the instrument is finished, the grain of the wood follows round the curve, or rather, the curve follows, round the grain of the wood, thereby giving the missile strength, which it would altogether lack were it made from a straight-grained piece of timber.

The whirligig toys, with which the natives who frequent the centres of population, amuse the "whitefellow," are perfectly useless in the pursuit of game, or for any other purpose, save that of amusement; in short, they resemble the historical razors in a most remarkable manner. The timbers principally used for making these missiles