grass, which when he had run a little way, having been fanned by the air that his motion produced, began to blaze. He then laid it down in a place convenient for his purpose, enclosing a spark of it in another quantity of grass, and so continued his course." By setting fire to the bush the natives managed to surround and kill a number of animals--kangarus, emus, lizards, &c. The lances of the Australians were of wood, sometimes with a shaft made of cane or the stem of a bulrush. The actual weapon itself was of hard wood, the point of which would be smeared with a resin which gave it a polish and made it enter deeper into what it struck. In the southern regions these lances usually had four prongs, each pointed with bone or sharp shells, and barbed. All such insertions of substances into the wood were held in their places by resin (Eucalyptus or _Dammara_ gum). They could become terrible weapons, for they were thrown with great force, and, owing to the smooth resin, entered far into the flesh of the person aimed at, and could never be drawn out without tearing the flesh or leaving sharp ragged splinters of bone or shell behind. When fighting at close quarters the lances were aimed with the hand, but at a greater distance were thrown by an instrument which Cook calls a throwing-stick. This was a plain, smooth piece of hard wood, highly polished, about 2 inches broad, ½ inch thick, and 3 feet long, with a small knob or hook at one end and a crosspiece about 3 or 4 inches long at the other. The knob at one end caught into a small dent or hollow, which was made for that purpose in the shaft of the lance near its point, but was not made sufficiently deep or rough to detain the lance when violently projected. When it was intended to hurl a lance by this means it was laid along the machine, being held in position by the knob entering the small hollow in the shaft, and the person throwing it held both lance and throwing-stick over his shoulder. He then, after a preliminary shake, hurled both the throwing-stick and the lance with all his force, but the stick being stopped by the cross-piece, which came against the shoulder with a sudden jerk, the lance went forward with incredible swiftness and with so good an aim that at a distance of 50 yards these black Australians were more certain of their mark than the white men often were with their guns. The only tools the people possessed seemed to be adzes with stone blades, wooden mallets, sharp shells, and fragments of coral; but for polishing their throwing-sticks and the points of their lances they rubbed down the wood with a leaf of a kind of wild fig tree, the underside of which had a very rough surface, which bit upon the wood almost as keenly (remarks Cook) as the shaving grass of Europe which was formerly used by English joiners. * * * * *