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208 The natives also eat earth-worms—and probably the Lumbricus was most often taken. Whether the large earth-worm of Brandy Creek and south-western Gippsland, the Megascolex Australis (McCoy), was ever used as food, is not known to me. This worm is about four feet in length and thick in proportion, and, if it can be eaten, must afford readily the means of satisfying the cravings of hunger, if not of the appeasing of the appetite. It has a peculiar smell, like tar.

In addition to all these, the blacks have for food the eggs of birds and reptiles; and indeed there is scarcely any living thing to be found in the earth, in the forests, on the plains, in the sea, or in the lakes, streams, or ponds, that they did not occasionally eat.

The eggs are named thus in Gippsland—those of the emu, Booyanga Miowera; those of the swan, Booyanga Gidi; those of the duck, Booyanga Wreng; those of the iguana, Booyanga Bathalook; and those of the turtle, Booyanga Ngerta. Eggs are never eaten raw. They are always cooked in the ashes until hard, and they are eaten in all stages of incubation.

Some account of the kinds of tubers, bulbs, roots, leaves, and fruits which, before the advent of the whites, constituted the vegetable food of the natives must necessarily be given. Though there was no lack of edible roots and tubers in Victoria, the natives were not able to derive from their lands such great quantities of excellent products as are yielded by the Bunya-bunya (Araucaria Bidwilli); the Mondo and Mondoleu (species of capparis); the Parpa (Ficus); the Tagon-tagon (mangrove—Avicennia tomentosa); and the rich farinaceous and other food obtained by the pounding, maceration, and desiccation of various nuts, seeds, and tubers of the many indigenous plants—including the palms and zamias—which are found so abundantly in the northern parts of Australia. Neither did the natives of the southern part of the island-continent resort even to rude methods of cultivation; nor had they the knowledge to treat seeds or roots, in their natural state poisonous, in such a manner as to derive from them the tapioca-like fecula and mucilaginous pastes that afford nourishment to the people in the north.