Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/34

 kept for sewing rugs and lashing the handles of stone hatchets and butt pieces of spears. Skulls and bones are split up, and the brains and marrow roasted. The brains are considered a great delicacy, and keep for a long time after being cooked. Eels are seldom eaten quite fresh; and, to impart a high flavour to them, they are buried in the ground until slightly tainted, and then roasted.

The aborigines exercise a wise economy in killing animals. It is considered illegal and a waste of food to take the life of any edible creature for pleasure alone, a snake or an eagle excepted. Articles of food are abundant, and of great variety; for everything not actually poisonous or connected with superstitious beliefs is considered wholesome. The natives never touch putrid flesh, however, except that of the whale, which the Peek whuurong natives bury till quite rotten. They are aware of the danger of inoculation by dead animal matter, and will not eat any animal unless they know how it has lost its life. The kangaroo and the emu they will eat if they have reason to believe that they have been killed by wild dogs, but they will not touch any food which has been partaken of by a stranger. They have no objection to eat tainted flesh or fish. If it is too far gone it is thoroughly roasted to dispel the unpleasant flavour. Fish that have been exposed to the rays of the moon are rejected as poisonous. Maggoty meat is rejected; and to prevent the flies from blowing the meat, it is hung in the smoke of the domestic fire.

Of quadrupeds, they eat the several kinds of kangaroo, the wombat — which is excellent eating — the bear, wild dog, porcupine ant-eater, opossum, flying squirrel, bandicoot, dasyure, platypus, water rat, and many smaller animals. Before the occupation of the great plains by cattle and sheep, there were numerous black and brown quadrupeds, called the yaakar, about the size of the rabbit, and with open pouches like the dasyures. They were herbivorous, and burrowed in mounds, living in communities in the open plains, where they had their nests. They had four or five young ones at a time; and, from what the natives say about the numbers that they dug up, they must have furnished a plentiful supply of food at all times. As these animals are now extinct in the Western District, although the remains of their burrows are still to be seen, it is supposed that they were the jerboa or bilboa, which are still very plentiful and troublesome in the interior of Australia.

The aborigines eat eagles and birds of prey, the emu, turkey bustard, gigantic crane, herons, and swan; geese and ducks in great variety, cormorants, ibis, curlew, coot, water-hen, lapwings, cockatoos, parrots, pigeons, crows, quails,