Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/37

 frogs, lizards, birds' eggs, lizard and tortoise eggs. The grubs are about the size of the little finger, and are cut out of trees and dead timber, and are eaten alive, while the work of chopping is going on, with as much pleasure as a white man eats a living oyster; but with this difference, that caution is necessary to avoid their powerful mandibles, ever ready to bite the lips or tongue. Roasted on embers, they are delicate and nutty in flavour, varying in quality according to the kind of tree into which they bore, and on which they feed. Those found in the trunks of the common wattle are considered the finest and sweetest. Every hunter carries a small hooked wand, to push into the holes of the wood, and draw them out. With an axe and an old grub-eaten tree, an excellent meal is soon procured; and when the women and children hear the sound of chopping, they hasten to partake of the food, which they enjoy above all others. The large fat grubs, to be found in quantities on the banks of marshes, drowned out of their holes, in times of floods, are gathered and cooked in hot ashes by the women and children.

The gum of the acacia, or common wattle tree, is largely consumed as food, as well as for cement; and each man has an exclusive right to a certain number of trees for the use of himself and family. As soon as the summer heat is over, notches are cut in the bark to allow the gum to exude. It is then gathered in large lumps, and stored for use. A sweet substance, called buumbuul (manna), resembling small pieces of loaf sugar, with a fine delicate flavour, which exudes and drops from the leaves and small branches of some kinds of gum trees, is gathered and eaten by the children, or mixed in a wooden vessel with acacia gum dissolved in hot water, as a drink. Another kind of manna, also called buumbuul, is deposited in considerable quantities by the large dark-coloured cicadæ on the stems of white gum trees near the River Hopkins. The natives ascend the trees, and scrape off as much as a bucketful of waxen cells filled with a liquid resembling honey, which they mix with gum dissolved in cold water, and use as a drink. They say that, in consequence of the great increase of opossums, caused by the destruction of the wild dog, they never get any buumbuul now, as the opossums eat it all. Another sweet liquid is obtained by mischievous boys from young parrakeets after they are fed by the old birds with honey dew, gathered from the blossom of the trees. When a nest is discovered in the hole of a gum tree, it is constantly visited, and the young birds pulled out, and held by their feet till they disgorge their food into the mouth of their unwelcome visitant.