it is very insipid, but extremely satisfying, and in this state is termed by the natives Joutey. It is full grown or nearly so by the time the waters recede, and remains green until the frosts come round, when it becomes quite brown, and, if not destroyed by fire, continues so until the young shoots spring up the following season; and so it goes on from year to year, until it becomes so thick as to be impervious to the sun, thus rendering the ground quite swampy and impassable for stock. In the summer the natives dig up the roots, which they either roast or boil [?], and after masticating them, and obtaining all the starch therefrom, they retain the stringy, fibrous parts in lumps, which the lubras carry about with them in their nets or bags, like careful housewives, until such be required for making strings or threads, which they afterwards net into bags, girdles, and other useful articles."
Baron von Mueller, it is said in the paper from which I have quoted, has examined this particular kind of Australian bulrush, and has found it to be closely allied to a species found in Switzerland—the Typha Shuttleworthi.[1]
Berries of several kinds were gathered by the natives of Victoria; and on the coast at Port Lincoln, in South Australia, the plant known there as karambi (Nitraria Billardierii) affords large quantities of a pleasant cool fruit. It is found on the western coast of Spencer's Gulf, growing on high sandhills; and, when the weather is hot, the natives lie at full length under a bush, and do not leave it until they have stripped it of its berries. The fruit is in form and size like an olive, and is of a dark-red color.[2]
In North-Western Australia the blacks prepare and eat the By-yu, the pulp of the nut of a cycas, which in its raw state is poisonous. It is mentioned by Capt. Cook, and well described by Grey:—"The native women collect the nuts from the palms in the month of March, and having placed them in some shallow pool of water, they leave them to soak for several days. When they have ascertained that the by-yu has been immersed in water for a sufficient time, they dig, in a dry sandy place, holes which they call mor-dak; these holes are about the depth that a person's arms can reach, and one foot in diameter; they line them with rushes, and fill them up with the nuts, over which they sprinkle a little sand, and then cover the holes nicely over with the tops of the grass-tree; in about a fortnight the pulp which encases the nut becomes quite dry, and it is then fit to eat; but, if eaten before that, it produces the effects already described [acting as a most violent emetic and cathartic]. The natives eat this pulp both raw and roasted; in the latter state they taste quite as well as a chestnut."[3]
This method of treating the nut has been carried undoubtedly from the north-east to the north-west.
Nardoo (Marsilea quadrifolia), previously referred to, the fruits of which form much of the vegetable food of the natives of the Cooper's Creek district, is extensively distributed, and owing to the different characters it presents—due to the season when it is gathered, the greater or less moisture in the soil in which
