snipes, and a great many kinds of sea fowls. The pelican and its eggs are considered too fishy to eat.
The tortoise and its eggs are much sought after. Snakes are considered good food, but are not eaten if they have bitten themselves, as the natives believe that the poison, when taken into the stomach, is as deadly as when injected into the blood by a bite. Lizards and frogs of all sorts are cooked and eaten.
Of fish, the eel is the favourite; but, besides it, there are many varieties of fish in the lakes and rivers, which are eaten by the natives. One in particular, called the tuupuurn, is reckoned a very great delicacy. It is caught plentifully, with the aid of long baskets, in the mouths of rivers during its passage to and from the sea, of which migration the natives are well aware.
Vast quantities of mollusca must have been consumed from very remote periods by the natives occupying the country adjoining the sea coast; for opposite every reef of rocks affording shelter to shell fish, immense beds of shells of various sorts are to be seen in the sand-hills, in layers intermixed with pieces of charred wood, ashes, and stones having the marks of fire on them. In some places where the action of the wind and spray has caused the hummocks to slip down into the sea, the layers of shells are exposed to a great depth; and, as they could not have been placed in their present positions by natural means along with pieces of burnt trap-rock, charred wood, and ashes, there is no doubt that they are of similar origin with the aboriginal deposits found on the east coast of Scotland and sea shores of Denmark and Holland, called 'middens' by the Scotch and 'moedens' by the Dutch. These immense mounds of shells being met with only near the sea, and nowhere in the interior, leads to the conclusion that the aborigines who fed on the mollusca and fish, never left the shore during the fishing season; and that, if they came from the interior, they never carried away any shell-fish with them, otherwise sea shells would be found in abundance at their old camping places in the bush, at a distance from the sea. An ancient deposit of marine shells, having every appearance of an aboriginal midden, was some years ago exposed on the east bank of the Yarra-Yarra River, near the Falls Bridge. At this spot a reef of rocks — which has been since partially removed — kept back the tide, and preserved the water sufficiently fresh for domestic purposes. This, no doubt, enabled the natives to camp there for fishing purposes; and hence the large deposit of shells at this spot.
Of roots and vegetables they have plenty. The muurang, which somewhat
