Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/250

Rh a large bill shaped exactly like a pick-axe. A flock of these busy delvers hard at work turning up the ground in search of grain just sown, their eyes surrounded by the curious broad blue rim peculiar to white cockatoos making them look like a gang of navvies in spectacles, is an object of such especial disgust to the farmer, that it is no wonder that he tries every plan to keep his cook in a good supply of them, more particularly as they make capital broth.

I was sitting alone one winter's night, with no light but that of the fire, when I was startled by the apparition of Khourabene, or rather by the sudden gleam of the whites of his eyes and the white wings of a cockatoo dangling from his hand—these being the first objects that I could distinguish in the darkened room, which he had entered without any previous knocking at the door. The purpose of his visit was explained by his offering me the cockatoo as an equivalent for "baccy," which I could not give him, as there happened to be no tobacco in the house. I told him, therefore, that he should have some tea instead, but the offer of tea to a tobaccoless man, and one moreover who, by his own account, had been wandering in the bush for two days without smoking, fell as flat as did the district visitor's present of flannel to those children in Thomas Hood's tale who were crying for a Christmas pudding. Grievously disappointed at the failure he snatched his useless pipe from his arm-band, saying very sulkily, "I kill my pipe," and deliberately broke it in two.

The flat curved wooden weapon, called a kylie, which the natives have invented for the purpose of killing several birds out of a flock at one throw, looks not unlike a bird