I will not here revert to the arguments which I have used to combat this opinion. Suffice to say, that I have since been favoured with much valuable information on the subject by Sir Walter Elliot, who has frequently accompanied the natives of India in their hunting expeditions with this weapon. He says that it is formed on the grain of the wood, like the Australian boomerang, the curve varying with the bend of the stem; it is whirled horizontally, with the end foremost, like the Australian practice, and is used by two tribes in the Deccan, viz. the Kolis of Guzerat and the Marawárs of Madura, but more especially in its simplest form by the former, who are of the Dravidian or black race of the Deccan. In a letter to me he says, speaking of these tribes:--‘I have seen both, and, indeed, served ten years in the latter district (Southern Mahratta), where the crooked stick is used by all the lower orders every Sunday during the hot season, when all agricultural labour is at a stand. The villagers turn out in large numbers, and scour the jungle armed with these sticks. Everything that rises is knocked over; deer, hares, birds, even the wild hog and the tiger are occasionally (though rarely, of course) included in the bag. I have seen a line of upwards of 100 men and boys, and the boomerang whirling about in such numbers, and with such precision, that even birds on the wing are brought down. I never met with any regularly formed specimens, except in the South; those in the North were mere angular sticks, of very various form, as natural branches occurred; the favourite form was a rather obtuse angle--nearly a right angle.’ Thus, whether we regard the purposes for which it is used, the material of which it is constructed, the manner of throwing, or the varieties of its form, the Indian and Australian boomerang is virtually the same weapon; and I think those who dispute their identity appear rather to have had in view the ‘collery stick’ of Madras and of the Marawárs than the boomerang of the Kolis.
We may therefore, I think, fairly consider the causes which may have led to the adoption of this weapon as sprung from a common source.
Since my last communication to this Institution, Professor Huxley has given to the world, in a paper read at the meeting of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology--of which I had the honour to be general secretary--in August, 1868, his views ‘on the distribution of the races of mankind, as bearing on their antiquity’.[185] The paper created a considerable sensation in the scientific world, owing to the boldness of the generalizations contained in it, and, it may be added, a certain amount of opposition. The accompanying map (Plate XVII) is taken from one drawn by Professor Huxley himself for the Ethnological Society, to illustrate this subject (_Journ. Ethno. Soc._ (1870) N. S. ii. 404-12).