Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/36

 resembles a small parsnip, with a flower like a buttercup, grows chiefly on the open plains. It is much esteemed on account of its sweetness, and is dug up by the women with the muurang pole. The roots are washed and put into a rush basket made on purpose, and placed in the oven in the evening to be ready for next morning's breakfast. When several families live near each other and cook their roots together, sometimes the baskets form a pile three feet high. The cooking of the muurang entails a considerable amount of labour on the women, inasmuch as the baskets are made by them; and as these often get burnt, they rarely serve more than twice. The muurang root, when cooked, is called yuwatch. It is often eaten uncooked. The bulbous root, muuyuup, of the common orchis, hinnæhinnitch, and of another named yarrayarupp, are eaten either raw or cooked. The weeakk, resembling a small carrot, is cooked in hot ashes without a basket. The bulb of the clematis, 'taaruuk,' is dug up in winter, cooked in baskets, and kneaded on a small sheet of bark into dough, and eaten under the name of murpit. The root of the native convolvulus, also called taaruuk, is cooked in the same way, and forms the principal vegetable food in winter, when the muurang is out of season. A tuber, called puewan, about the size of a walnut, and resembling the earthnut of Europe, is dug up, and eaten roasted. It has no stalk or leaf to mark its locality, and is discovered from the shallow holes scraped by the bandicoots in search of it, and from a scarcity of herbage in the neighbourhood. A variety of the sedge — the flag of the cooper — has a root of pleasant flavour, resembling celery, which is eaten uncooked as a salad. So also are the salsuginous plant, the mesembryanthemum, or pig's face, and the sow thistle. The latter is eaten to produce sleep. A kind of bread is made of the root of the common fern, roasted in hot ashes, and beaten into paste with a stone. Mushrooms, and several kinds of fungi, are eaten raw; and a large underground fungus, about the size of an ordinary turnip, called native bread by white people, is eaten uncooked, and is very good.

Large numbers of pupæ, found in the ground at the foot of gum trees, are dug up in winter, and baked in hot ashes. They are the transitional forms of large green processional caterpillars, which crawl in lines on the stems of trees in search of a place to rest during their change into the pupa state. Of this transformation, and of their ultimately becoming moths, the aborigines are well aware. In addition to these there are many delicacies, chiefly collected by the women and children, and cooked in hot ashes, such as grubs, small fish,