Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/64

59 are sheoak (casuarina), myall (acacia hornalophylla), and the stunted box (eucalyptus dumosa), of the great northern plains.

They have not any very great variety of spears; the few kinds they have, however, are ample for all their requirements, and each description is set apart for its own particular purpose.

These immense jagged spears, so elaborately fashioned, and over which long days of tedious labour have been bestowed, are never by any chance used in the pursuit of game; they are merely kept for the adornment of the fronts of their loondthals. It does, however, sometimes occur that in fits of ungovernable passion they will seize one of these ornamental weapons, and transfix whatever may have given rise to the rage, be it man or beast.

These spears are principally made from a tall-growing box (one of the eucalypti), which often attains to an altitude of over a hundred feet; it is indigenous to the north-western portion of the colony, and to Riverina; it has a fine wavy grain, consequently easily worked when in a green state. When well seasoned, however, it is nearly as hard as ebony. This weapon in general is nine feet long, barbed on two sides for fourteen inches up from the point. The barbs are shaped exactly after the fashion of those on the arrow heads, which have been discovered in Central France, being the handiwork of primitive man who flourished in the post pliocene period.

The aborigines imagine that these spears have so great an affinity to lightning that if exposed during the progress of a thunderstorm they would surely attract the electric fluid,