The Sun. — 1868-05-29 (London, England)

THE AUSTRALIANS AT KENNINGTON  OVAL.  The " Black Eleven," whose performances in the -,-ricket-field have scarcely been of the remarkable character that the newspapers of the antipodes had led us to anticipate, changed their programme on Thursday, and, instead of exhibiting such respectable skill in the favourite English game as might perhaps warrant their being matched against the second eleven of Eton or Rugby, performed a series of feats more or less novel to the inhabitants of these isles. The most interesting, because the strangest and the most nationally characteristic, of their exercises were the trials in the throwing of the boomerang and the spear. For these warlike pastimes the Australians bad cast aside their cricketing costume in favour of close fitting black woollen suits, which gave them, at some distance, the appearance of being clad in strict aboriginal fashion, with only the short trunks or drawers of kangaroo or other kind of skin that a savage would wear. They affected, beside, a head-dress of two long feathers, crossed in a peculiar and not ungraceful curve. Standing in line, they cast their primitive-looking javelins with great force and skill, sending them, as the archers of olden days sent their arrows, high in the air, to gain a longer flight, and a more effectual fall. The mode of throwing these long, light, tough lances, which are mere natural spears of sharpened wood, unshod, and simply winged with a piece of one of the larger grasses, like bamboo, is rather curious. The thrower holds a short piece of wood, with a notch in the end farthest from his hand ; in this notch he places the butt of the spear ; and in making his throw he thus gains the same momentum that is given by a sling. After competing in line, the blacks took sides, and threw at each other, often managing to send their lances into the earth at the very feet of their opponents, who seemed to know exactly where the point would strike, and awaited its fall without moving an inch. The boomerang, though not entirely strange to this country, having been introduced some years since as a toy of the most formidable kind, has never been so skilfully employed in English hands as in the hands of these natives of Australia, whose untutored progenitors must have discovered by accident or instinct a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon in the law which governs projectiles. The boomerang is a strong, broad, curved lath, convex on its upper and flat on its lower surface. It is propelled forwards, skimming and twirl• ing through the air, with a loud whirr ; and when it has touched the ground with, one end it instantly rises and continues to gyrate in the most wonderful manner at a great height, now sailing like a swallow, now poising itself like a sky-lark, and now flying in circles like a pigeon, till it swoops like a hawk, and at last falls, sometimes near the man who has thrown it, and sometimes a considerable distance behind him. The motions of the boomerang- are so erratic that one can hardly imagine how it can ever be useful as a weapon of warfare or an implement of the chase ; and its employment for pastime will need a wider field even than Kennington Oval, where it came flying twice or thrice among the spectators, cutting one person's hat nearly into two pieces.  Mr. or John Bright, t M.P., has accepted an invita_ tin by the Liverpool Reform Associaohim tion, to attend a breakfast in Liverpool on the morning of Thursday next. ATTEMPTED Munnnn.—At the Chichester City Petty Sessions, William Cook, a shoemaker, aged 39, has been charged with having attempted to murder a child, aged 13 years, named Phoebe Cole. - From the evi• dence of the grandfather of the child it appeared that on the 21st inst. he was sitting in his room in Orchard. street with the child. when the prisoner (his son) came in, and, taking the child by the neck, cut her across the throat with a shoemaker's knife, saying, " I have done for you." After that the prisoner went to his father and seized hold of him, but was prevented from doing any mischief to the old man by some neighbours who interfered. Corroborative evidence was given, and the prisoner was committed to take his trial at the Lewes Assizes. The poor little girl is progressing satisfactorily towards rangy,