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 HOLOCARPA 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 claim to original research or to the possession of any but common knowledge of the race at large.  Learned societies and learned men have done and are doing all that is possible to acquire and accumulate information of the fast vanishing race.  I merely record odd incidents, which may or may not prove useful and of interest, or which may bear repetition.  An occasional gleam of satisfaction is vouchsafed even to casual and superficial students of human nature.

The supply of bait run out one day when we were fishing off the rocks with throw-lines.  Mickie said—­“We catch ’em plenty little fella fish with wild dynamite!” I asked him what he knew about dynamite.  “Not white fella’s dynamite.  Wild dynamite—­I show you.”

Growing on the blistering rocks, with roots, down in the crevices, was a lowly vine, or rather a diffuse, creeping shrub with myrtle-like leaves and racemes of white flowers.  “That fella wild dynamite,” said Mickie, as he tore up several strands of the plant and bunched them, leaves and all, in his hand.  He made a small bundle, and going to an isolated pool in the rocks in which were small fish he beat the leaves with a nulla-nulla, dipping the bruised mass frequently in the water.  In a few minutes the fish were darting about erratically, apparently making frantic efforts to get out of the water.  One by one they became stupefied and helpless, floating belly up.  Mickie filled his hat with them, and as the soporific effects of the juice of the leaves passed off, the remaining fish recovered and were soon swimming about again as if nothing had happened.  Mickie had seen dynamite used to kill fish wholesale, hence his adaptation of the name of the plant known to him as “Paggarra,” and to botanists as Derris SCANDENS.