Harald Jensen lith. Hoffensberg & Trapṣ Etabl.
PSEUDOCHIRUS ARCHERI. N.SP.
Still, I found the fear of this nettle to be exaggerated. If you at once put on some of the juice of the plant called Colocasia macrorhiza, which resembles an arum, and which is always found growing near the nettle, the pain is soothed and the effect of the poison neutralised. This sharp white juice, which is itself poisonous, produces a violent smarting pain where the skin is thin, as for instance on the lips.
It is a remarkable fact that the antidote to this poisonous nettle always grows in its immediate vicinity, and I cannot help thinking of a parallel case, viz. kusso and kamala, the best remedies for tape-worm, which are found in Abyssinia, the home of the tape-worm.
One night we spent in a cave near the brook. I had some hesitation at first in spending the night in these scrubs, where the air is unhealthy and apt to produce fever. Four white men died in one week in the scrubs along Johnston river. But I assumed that I, being by this time used to the climate, could sleep there as well as the blacks, who did so without injury. Besides, the lower scrubs are surely much more unhealthy than those farther up the mountains, and I had never suffered any harm from stopping in them overnight. The cave was not large, and was low, cold, and damp, and thus not very inviting. We had but its naked stones for a couch, for there was of course no grass to be found in the scrub. A big fire was kindled; outside it was pitch dark.
My blacks had found in a large fallen tree some larvæ of beetles (Coleoptera), on which we feasted. There are several varieties of these edible larvæ, and all have a different taste. The best one is glittering white, of the thickness of a finger, and is found in the acacia-trees. The others live in the scrubs, and are smaller, and not equal to the former in flavour. The blacks are so fond of them that they even eat them alive while they pick them out of the decayed trunk of a tree—a not very attractive spectacle. The larvæ were usually collected in baskets and so taken to the camp. The Australian does not as a rule eat raw animal food; the only exception I know of being these coleoptera larvæ.
Edible Beetle (Eurynassa australis) (natural size).
Larva of Same (natural size).
The large fire crackled lustily in the cave while we sat round it preparing the larvæ. We simply placed them in the red-hot ashes, where they at once became brown and crisp, and the fat fairly bubbled in them while they were being thus prepared. After being turned once or twice they were thrown out from the ashes with a stick, and were ready to be eaten. Strange to say, these larvæ were the best food the natives were able to offer me, and the only kind which I really enjoyed. If such a larva is broken in two, it will be found to consist of a yellow and tolerably compact mass rather like an omelette. In taste it resembles an egg, but it seemed to me that the best kind, namely the acacia larva, which has the flavour of nuts, tasted even better than a European omelette. The natives always consumed the entire larva, while I usually bit off the head and threw aside the skin, but my men always consumed my leavings with great gusto. They also ate the beetles as greedily as the larvæ, simply removing the hard wings before roasting them. The natives are also fond of eating the larger species of wood-beetles. Some crawfish, moreover, were roasted, and had as fine a flavour as those in Europe; unfortunately there were not many of them.