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222 but the blacks knew well how to obtain a clean and cool draught. They scratched a hole in the sand beside the pool, thus making a filter, in which the water rose cool but muddy. They next threw into the hole some tufts of long grass, through which they sucked the cooler water, freed in this manner from sand or gravel.

Stokes refers to the ingenuity and great fertility of resources of the natives in all situations, and particularly when journeying in apparently waterless tracts. They were never at a loss. Besides procuring water from the roots of trees, they collected also the dew from the leaves of shrubs.

The Bottle-tree of Northern Australia furnishes a refreshing beverage. Binkey (Brachychiton DelabeeheiDelabechei [sic]) is generally found in stony scrub land, and is remarkable on account of its enlarged trunk, similar in shape to a lemonade bottle. The natives cut holes in the soft trunk, where the water lodges and rots the trunk to its centre. These trunks are so many artificial reservoirs of water. When a tree has been cut, its resources are not exhausted. The tired hunter, when he sees a tree that has been tapped, cuts a hole somewhat lower than the old cuts, and obtains an abundant supply of the sweet mucilaginous substance afforded by this plant.

One of the myths of the natives, referred to in another part of this work, would lead one to suppose that they were not unacquainted with the fact that the bladder of the frog acts as a reservoir for water—like the pericardium and bladder of the large tortoise of the Galapagos Archipelago—and they may have occasionally killed these reptiles, as well for water as for food.

I cannot learn whether or not the natives of Victoria used any plants as narcotics or sedatives, or whether any herb or shrub in the colony was chewed or eaten as a nepenthetic; but in the Cooper's Creek district the blacks chew Pitcherie, which is believed to be a narcotic, and the men are very fond of it. As preserved in their bags, it presents the appearance of small dried twigs, and is said to be procured from a narrow-leaved shrub growing in the country to the north-west of Cooper's Creek.