Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/100

 a foot-stalk twenty feet long, resembling the sugar-cane, and terminating in a spiral spike, not unlike an ear of wheat. This stem is used by the natives for spears, the end being hardened by fire." The stem of the Grass-tree is however soft and pithy, scarcely stronger than a kail stalk, and quite incapable of being pointed or hardened; the use the natives make of it, is to fasten a well dried piece of it with gum to the after part of their spears, that its lightness, acting like the feathers of an arrow, may prevent the spear from rising in the air when thrown. Again, after giving most formidable Latin lists of Australian birds, copied from Swainson and others, Mr. Martin observes in another place, in his description of Illawarra, that there are in that locality, black cockatoos with scarlet crests. There are no such birds in the colony; there are black cockatoos marked with yellow on the tails, and two varieties of black macaws with scarlet bands on their tails, but their crests are black. The bird to which I presume Mr. Martin alludes is an iron-grey bird with a scarlet head, (Callocephalon galleatum) which is very often met with at Illawarra. Errors such as these are scarcely worth mentioning, and are almost unavoidable in writing a work of such magnitude as Mr. Montgomery Martin's History of all the British Colonies.

The Hastings and its tributaries are navigable for boats as far as the influence of the tide extends, which runs up the Maria creek to the village reserve