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Title: Throwing-sticks in the National Museum
Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-'84,
Government Printing Office, Washington, 1890, pages 279-289

Author: Otis T. Mason

Release Date: January 25, 2006 [EBook #17606]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.

THROWING-STICKS IN THE NATIONAL
MUSEUM.

OTIS T. MASON,
_Curator of the Department of Ethnology_

From the Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-'84,
Part II, pages 279-289, and plates I-XVII

WASHINGTON:
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
1890.

I.--THROWING-STICKS IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM.

By Otis T. Mason.

Col. Lane Fox tells us there are three areas of the throwing-stick:
Australia, where it is simply an elongated spindle with a hook at the
end; the country of the Conibos and the Purus, on the Upper Amazon,
where the implement resembles that of the Australians, and the
hyperborean regions of North America.

It is of this last group that we shall now speak, since the National
Museum possesses only two specimens from the first-named area and none
whatever from the second.

The researches and c