"The only sweets," says Mr. Taplin, "which the Narrinyeri knew of before the advent of Europeans were the honey of the native honeysuckle or Banksia; the honey of the grass-tree flowers (Xanthorrhœa), and the manna which falls from the peppermint-gum tree (Eucalyptus). These they used to gather carefully, and infuse them in water, and drink the infusion with great enjoyment."[1]
Little is generally known of the manna of Australia. It was, however, at one time an important article of food; and in the western part of Victoria the natives gather it in pretty large quantities still.
In summer the Aborigines of the Mallee country eat Lárap, Lárp, or Lerp—a kind of manna. It somewhat resembles in appearance small shells; it is sweet, and in color white or yellowish-white. It is gathered in December, January, February, and March. It is a nutritious food, and is eaten with various kinds of animal food. "This saccharine substance," says Baron von Mueller, C.M.G., in a letter to me, "is obtained from one, or perhaps from several, species of Eucalyptus of the Murray and Darling districts. It is not a real manna, but is known as lerp, a name given to it by the Aborigines." Dr. Thomas Dobson, of Hobart Town, many years ago referred the insect from which the lerp emanates to the genus Psylla as Ps. eucalypti. Lerp is very different from the so-called manna, which is gathered from the large Eucalyptus viminalis occurring near Melbourne and elsewhere. [For the geographic range of E. vim. see 3rd vol. of Flora Australiensis.] The latter (the manna of the E. viminalis) emanates from a cicadeous insect—seemingly a true species of cicada—and the substance is amorphous; while the lerp-sugar is of a crystalline and shell-like structure. Dr. Thomas Anderson, of Edinburgh, was the first to make known to scientific men the character and properties of lerp, and this was in 1849. Baron von Mueller states, further, that until the insect which produces lerp is collected in all its stages, and examined, together with the flowering and fruiting branches of the Eucalyptus on which the insect feeds, it will be impossible to give such an account of it as will be satisfactory, and that there may be more than one species of bush which furnishes lerp.
Baron von Mueller adds that the so-called manna is perhaps in some localities a saccharine exudation of the bark of Myoporum platycarpum.
The following account of two kinds of manna found in Victoria is given by the jurors in the records of the Victorian Exhibition of 1861:—"Two varieties of a substance called manna are among the natural products in the Exhibition. One kind is ordinarily found in the form of irregular little rounded masses, of an opaque white color, and having a pleasant sweetish taste. In the early mouths of summer it is most abundaut, being secreted by the leaves and slender twigs of the E. viminalis from punctures or injuries done to these parts of the tree. The little masses often present an aperture at one end, showing the attachment of the small twig from which the manna has been secreted in a liquid form—at first transparent, and of the consistence of thin honey—and then, becoming solid, drops off in the condition that has been mentioned. It consists principally of a kind of grape-sugar, and about five per cent. of the substance called Mannite."
- ↑ The Narrinyeri, p. 31.
