Blyth, of Russell, who has kindly given me permission to bring it before you. He informed me that he had noticed that the leaves of the Eucalypti, when blown off the trees, often acquire the whirling flight and returning action of the boomerang, the leaves tending to return and fall upon the ground perpendicularly below the starting-point of their course.

The correctness of this observation I have repeatedly verified; and this character of the course of the falling leaf, when taken into consideration with the striking similarity in form between the boomerang and the leaves of the blue-gum is, I submit, complete evidence that the origin of the boomerang was due to imitation of the form and flight of the leaves. The absence of the boomerang in other countries is thus accounted for, since the Eucalypti are essentially Australian, the bush throughout the greater portion of the continent being chiefly composed of them, while comparatively few are to be found elsewhere.

That the Australians had a throwing missile previous to the development of the boomerang form, is rendered probable when one considers that a strong resemblance in typical character appears to exist between the Australian and the Indian Dekhan tribes, and possibly the ancient Egyptians. Colonel Lane Fox has grouped them together in his classification of weapons; and Prof. Huxley had previously taken these races to comprise the lowest forms of his Zeitrichi, or smooth-haired people, since they all possess long prognathous skulls, with well-developed brow ridges, dark eyes and black hair. The Dekhan, or aboriginal tribes of India, had a missile which they whirled in the manner of boomerangs to bring down game. The rudest kind is described by Sir Walter Elliot as being found in the South Mahratta district, and were merely crooked sticks, the most developed form being the “Katuria” of the Kules of Gujerat, a weapon resembling the boomerang in shape, and in being an edged flat missile preserving its plane of rotation, but being too thick to swerve or return.

The Egyptian fowler used a throwing cudgel. (See E. B. Tylor's “Early History of Mankind.”)

These forms of weapons in races allied to the Australians would seem to indicate that the boomerang had been developed from them to its present form by the Australians often witnessing the peculiar course of the Eucalypti leaves, all savage races being keenly alive to the improvement of their weapons. In the diagram is shown the form of the boomerang compared with some leaves of the Eucalyptus globulus. The curved sectional form, essential to the soaring flight of both boomerang and leaf, is present in each.

Fig. 1.