Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/149

Kensington Museum, proved at once that they were missiles for straight-forward progress. The Australians used many varieties of such weapons, but they did not call them returning boomerangs, and it is a pity that by an unhappy confusion of terms the circling instrument has been associated with the progressive one. If any person were to show an Australian native the instrument figured 20 in the Catalogue, and stated (p. 30) as "found to fly with a return flight like the Australian boomerang," the Australian would need great command of countenance to restrain his laughter. The author regrets that he can furnish no scientific explanation of the course of the circling instrument, but is consoled by the fact that a valued friend—the late Professor W. P. Wilson, a Senior Wrangler of Cambridge—when he saw the instrument thrown in Australia, declared that no explanation had been given of its path. Reasons which apply to the return of the card were, in his opinion, inapplicable. [1896. The number of people whom the author met in England (in a few short years) who had implicitly believed that the plaything was a weapon for war, proved how hard it is to weed out a popular error.]