The natives also eat earth-worms—and probably the Lumbricus was most often taken. Whether the large earth-worm of Brandy Creek and south-western Gippsland, the Megascolex Australis (McCoy), was ever used as food, is not known to me. This worm is about four feet in length and thick in proportion, and, if it can be eaten, must afford readily the means of satisfying the cravings of hunger, if not of the appeasing of the appetite. It has a peculiar smell, like tar.
In addition to all these, the blacks have for food the eggs of birds and reptiles; and indeed there is scarcely any living thing to be found in the earth, in the forests, on the plains, in the sea, or in the lakes, streams, or ponds, that they did not occasionally eat.
The eggs are named thus in Gippsland—those of the emu, Booyanga Miowera; those of the swan, Booyanga Gidi; those of the duck, Booyanga Wreng; those of the iguana, Booyanga Bathalook; and those of the turtle, Booyanga Ngerta. Eggs are never eaten raw. They are always cooked in the ashes until hard, and they are eaten in all stages of incubation.[1]
Vegetable Food.
Some account of the kinds of tubers, bulbs, roots, leaves, and fruits which, before the advent of the whites, constituted the vegetable food of the natives must necessarily be given. Though there was no lack of edible roots and tubers in Victoria, the natives were not able to derive from their lands such great quantities of excellent products as are yielded by the Bunya-bunya (Araucaria Bidwilli); the Mondo and Mondoleu (species of capparis); the Parpa (Ficus); the Tagon-tagon (mangrove—Avicennia tomentosa); and the rich farinaceous and other food obtained by the pounding, maceration, and desiccation of various nuts, seeds, and tubers of the many indigenous plants—including the palms and zamias—which are found so abundantly in the northern parts of Australia. Neither did the natives of the southern part of the island-continent resort even to rude methods of cultivation; nor had they the knowledge to treat seeds or roots, in their natural state poisonous, in such a manner as to derive from them the tapioca-like fecula and mucilaginous pastes that afford nourishment to the people in the north.
- ↑ "The eggs of birds are extensively eaten by the natives, being chiefly confined to those kinds that leave the nest at birth, as the leipoa, the emu, the swan, the goose, the duck, &c. But of others, where the young remain some time in the nest after being hatched, the eggs are usually left, and the young taken before they can fly. The eggs of the leipoa, or native pheasant, are found in singular-looking mounds of sand, thrown up by the bird in the midst of the scrubs, and often measuring several yards in circumference. The egg is about the size of the goose egg, but the shell is extremely thin and fragile. The young are hatched by the heat of the sand and leaves, with which the eggs are covered."—Eyre's Journal, vol. II,, p. 274.
produced, but after a few days they become accustomed to its use, and then thrive and fatten exceedingly upon it. These insects are held in such estimation among the Aborigines that they assemble from all parts of the country to collect them from these mountains. It is not only the native blacks that resort to the Bugong, but the crows also congregate for the same purpose." The natives attack the crows, kill them, and eat them, and like them very much after they have fattened on the moths. Eyre mentions this moth. Not only the natives but their dogs also fattened on it.
