it grows, and the temperature and humidity of the air—a great number of varieties have been collected and named by botanists; but the Government Botanist, who has examined all the Australian Marsileæ that have been named, is of opinion that they are referable to one species, the typical Linnæan Marsilea quadrifolia. "The nutritive properties of the Marsilea fruit," says Baron von Mueller, "are evidently very scanty. It seems to contain but slight traces of protein combinations, and but little starch, its nourishing property resting mainly on a mucilage, pertaining to a certain extent of that of the seed-testa of flax, cress, quince, zygophyllum," &c.[1]
Mr. Gason very accurately describes the nardoo:—"A very hard fruit, a flat oval, of about the size of a split pea; it is crushed or pounded, and the husk winnowed. In bad seasons this is the mainstay of the natives' sustenance; but it is the worst food possible, possessing very little nourishment and being difficult to digest."[2]
Mr. Howitt describes it in his notes on the Aborigines of Cooper's Creek.
In the swampy tracts near the lower part of Cooper's Creek, as likewise to a less extent in other low swampy lands, liable to periodic inundations, this fern grows gregariously, and when the floods abate the fruits are well formed and very abundant.
The melancholy incidents attached to the fate of Burke and Wills, who, on returning to Cooper's Creek, vainly sought the means of sustaining life by eating the nardoo flour, will never be forgotten by Australians. Wills and King—when the small party was reduced to extremity—used to collect daily a bag of nardoo seed, and carry it to the camp, where Burke employed himself in pounding it. Wills, in his journal, says—"I cannot understand this nardoo at all; it certainly will not agree with me in any form. We are now reduced to it alone, and we manage to get from four to five pounds per day between us. . . . . . It seems to give us no nutriment. . . . . . . Starvation on nardoo is by no means very unpleasant, but for the weakness one feels, and the utter inability to move oneself, for, as far as appetite is concerned, it gives me the greatest satisfaction. Certainly fat and sugar would be more to one's taste; in fact those seem to me to be the greatest stand-by for one in this extraordinary continent; not that I mean to depreciate the farinaceous food; but the want of sugar and fat in all substances obtainable here is so great that they become almost valueless to us as articles of food without the addition of something else."
The natives appear to subsist largely on nardoo and fish in this part of the continent, but they have in addition many roots and plants.
Mr. Cobham informs me that the blacks are in the habit of going to the swamps early in the morning, for the purpose of collecting the fruits of the nardoo. They take the fruits home in bags, and roast them in the ashes of their fires. When roasted, they are put into a shallow wooden vessel, made by
- ↑ On the Systematic Position of the Nardoo Plant, and the Physiological Characteristics of its Fruit, 1862.
- ↑ The Dieyerie Tribe, p. 32.
