CHAPTER XIV.

SOMETHING TO EAT.

HORACE got many a bit of information as to plants from an amateur in botany, long resident in the island.

One morning the young man started the con

versation.

'Really, Mr Smith, I could not have believed that a country so rich as yours in plants should be so ill provided with any fit as food for man.'

'Before taking up that question, I should like to know whether your ancestors, who dwelt in Caledonia before Cæsar came, found so many native fruits.'

'No; I rather think those were no great shakes. I don't despise the cranberry, but object to the wild crab.'

'Then don't crow over Tasmania. But there is still something to be said upon our supply. Let us see. You will admit that the Aborigines may have found vegetable food here.'

'Certainly. I do not dislike the native cherry, though it is rather too sweet; but the Tasmanian wild cranberry is inferior to the British one.'

'But have you tasted the native bread?' 'What is that?'

'The Mylitta is a tuber in the ground, often as big as a man's head. Dug up near rotten trees, its flavour is not admired by us, though something like boiled rice. Aborigines ate it eagerly. There is another excellent fungus found growing on the branches of the myrtle tree westward. When the skin is peeled off, one might fancy, at a meal, that he was eating cold cowheel.'

'Not a highly spiced substance then. But there are mushrooms, I know, and just like the English sort. But what fern is that the natives indulged in?'

'The edible fern is the Tara, and very similar to the common brake of British woods. The root when ripe is as long as the finger. Our blacks would roast it in the hot ashes, drag off the black peeling with their bright teeth, and devour it with their roast Kangaroo and Opossum.'

'I am aware that pigs root about the fern; but is there any quantity of fecula, or arrowroot material, in it?'

'If you will grate a root, or beat it well, and then mix with water, you will get the nourishing precipitate. As to the Tree-fern heart, I never knew our people take to it. The wild man split open the top, and roasted the heart, a sort of turnip substance, several inches thick. There is, also, a nutty substance obtained from the base of some sedgy leaves.'

'When thirsty in the bush,' said Horace, 'I have gladly chewed the queer branchlets of the leafless She Oak. The cattle like a munch at them too. But now

for a description of your Tasmanian fruits. I will leave out the catalogue of what are called the English ones, in the culture of which you manage to get a flavour that the mother country could prefer to that of its own varieties.'

'Our native fruits, like our vegetables, have no great reputation. But while Sir John Franklin, to save starvation when wind-bound in Macquarie Harbour, was well content to take some wild cabbage, other Bush-bound heroes have not been ungrateful for kangaroo apples.

'Please describe this aboriginal apple.'

'The shrub sometimes grows nearly as high as a man. The apple follows the birth of a blue flower. As the fruit ripens the skin bursts. It has a mealy taste, and is somewhat acid, though perfectly wholeOur own youngsters go in for the same.'

some.

'What are the Botany Bay greens?'

'These were eaten in a terrible famine at Port Jackson in the days of the first settlement. We have the same plant here. It belongs to the goosefoot family. The Colonial housekeepers still pickle the young shoots.'

'Your Macquarie Harbour vine is now so common as a climber in Hobart Town, that I have often admired its rapidity of growth, and the bright green of its ivy-like leaf. But what of the fruit?

'This hangs in a bunch, and has a sweet taste, though its triangular seed is unpleasant enough. The

convicts were often glad enough to gather it for pies and puddings, and we sometimes make a jam out of it.'

'Indeed! when the Island abounds with such deli

cious raspberries. I pity your taste. Is the cherry

tree common?'

'It is not found universally through the Island,

being scarce to the north-west. shade of a larger forest tree.

It always needs the This exocarpus is like

the she-oak, you know, in having no leaves, but a sort of knotted branchlets or branches, with a slight green fringe at each knot.

'I know the fruit is of an oval shape, the size of a large currant, of a sweet taste, and attached to a nut, instead of having it inside.'

'We have a variety of currant-like fruits, but of an acid flavour. Children are sometimes drawn to a taste by the pretty-looking currants. The epacris family, including the native cranberry, yield so much seed to the thin pulp that the fruit is not worth the gathering. The juniper sort of trailing plant, on which the cranberry grows, bears lovely scarlet blossoms in winter. The ordinary native currant is a leucopogon. The species is named after the French naturalist M. Riche. When here with D'Entrecasteaux, in 1792, he was lost in the Bush for three days, and supported life on these berries. They are observed near the coast, small and white, hanging from a scrub five or six feet high.'

'When I was scrambling about the breast of Mount

Wellington, I gathered some of the heath wax clusters. I found the little white wax-like fruit taste something after the fashion of a young gooseberry. But your tea plants amused me.'

'And yet the old Colonists were glad enough to try a brew of the leaves, when the Chinese quality was a guinea to two guineas a pound. The burr, whose seeds so unpleasantly fasten on to the ladies' dresses when going near them, has a leaf which is no bad substitute for tea. The melaleuca and leptospermum are colonial tea plants. There is a correa called the Cape Barren tea.'

'What part of the grass-tree did the Blacks eat?

'The xanthorrhoea, which throws up so lofty a flower-stalk, and which is a safe indication of bad land, is a coarse grass. The waddy was used to knock off the stiff leaves from the trunk. At the base of the fresh inner leaves was a tender morsel joining on to the stem. Our boys will sometimes get this and roast it. The roasted native yam was always welcome to Whites or Blacks.'

'But is there not a native potato, which is not a berry but a root?'

'There is. It is the gastrodia, growing at the decaying roots of the stringy bark. Though without leaves, its brown flowers mount up to a couple of feet. The bulb tubers below grow out of one another, like kidney potatoes, which they resemble in size and form. The nourishment is drawn directly from the