together, and alternated with the nuts of the sandalwood tree, they make a pretty row of beads, a purpose for which nature seems to have intended them.
The scarlet seed-pods of the Zamia plants are decidedly poisonous unless buried underground for a fortnight, by which means they become harmless eating, and, as such, are then consumed by the natives; but the process would little benefit a starving person to whom the necessity of burying his dinner for fourteen days before he could eat it might be only too suggestive of what he himself would be fit for by the time his meal was ready. Our little native girl Binnahan once dug up for me a root about two inches long which did not taste amiss, and at another time she brought me a stalk which she begged me to try, recommending it with the words "black fellow eatum—big-fellow glad findum," but she seemed rather injured at the faint praise that I bestowed on its insipid though not nauseous flavour. A colonial lady also showed me a plant with a glutinous leaf somewhat resembling the half-hardy annual called mezembryanthemum, of which she told me she had sometimes made puddings, but that they were not very tempting. With the exception of the acacia seeds, which the natives were in the habit of pounding into meal before they learned to prefer flour, I have now named every indigenous esculent brought to my notice, and I do not think that the table which the whole of them could "furnish forth" would be considered by a vegetarian as an inducement to emigrate.
If due attention, however, is paid to situation and to soil, imported fruits and vegetables appear to find Western Australia as congenial as the lands to which they severally
