S&SWM PR papers L1401

McKenny Hughes

18 Hills Road | Cambridge | Sept 24 1895

My dear Pitt Rivers

You once showed me a solution proving the evolution of the boomerang from the battle axe - Did you ever publish tat and if so can you give me the reference.

Have you noticed the curious resemblance between the battle axe that leads up to the boomerang and the front ribs of the cetacean - [Drawing] The front ribs do not lie flat to the side of the animal but at right angles to it and the blade of the rib is slightly bent so as to appear shamfered alternately as in a boomerang. Now the bone was too heavy to spin in the air but when they imitated bone in wood, copying exactly as they always did, the wood was light enough to spin and take the peculiar course of the boomerang.

Have not you noticed this?

yours [illegible]

McKenny Hughes

Thomas McKenny Hughes was Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University

 Transcribed by AP for the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project