Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia And Overland From Adelaide To King George's Sound In The Years 1840-1: Sent By The Colonists Of South Australia By Eyre, Edward John
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Frogs Are Dug Out Of The Ground By The Women, Or Caught In The Marshes,
And Used In Every Stage From The Tadpole Upwards.
Rats are also dug out of the ground, but they are procured in the
greatest numbers and with the utmost facility when the approach of the
floods in the river flats compels them to evacuate their domiciles.
A
variety is procured among the scrubs under a singular pile or nest which
they make of sticks, in the shape of a hay-cock, three or four feet high
and many feet in circumference. A great many occupy the same pile and are
killed with sticks as they run out.
Snakes, lizards and other reptiles are procured among the rocks or in the
scrubs. Grubs are got out of the gum-tree into which they eat their way,
as also out of the roots of the mimosa, the leaves of the zamia, the
trunk of the xanthorra, and a variety of other plants and shrubs.
One particularly large white grub, and a great bon-bouche to the natives,
is procured out of the ground. It is about four inches long and half an
inch in thickness, and is obtained by attaching a thin narrow hook of
hard wood to the long, wiry shoots of the polygonum, and then pushing
this gently down the hole through which the grub has burrowed into the
earth until it is hooked. Grubs are procured at a depth of seven feet in
this way without the delay or trouble of digging.
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Words from 190829 to 191086
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