Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia - Edward Ellis Morris

"When footpaths about Christchurch were fringed with tutu bushes, little boys were foolish enough to pluck the beautiful berries and eat them. A little fellow whose name was `Richard' ate of the fruit, grew sick, but recovered. When the punster heard of it, he said, `Ah! well, if the little chap had died, there was an epitaph all ready for him, Decus et tutamen. Dick has ate toot, amen.'"

1889. G. P. Williams and W. P. Reeves, `Colonial Couplets,' p. 20:

"You will gather from this that I'm not `broken in,'
And the troublesome process has yet to begin
Which old settlers are wont to call `eating your tutu;'
(This they always pronounce as if rhyming with boot)."

1889. Vincent Pyke, `Wild Will Enderby, p. 16 [Footnote]:

"The poisonous tutu bushes. A berry-bearing, glossy-leaved plant, deadly to man and to all animals, except goats."

1891. T. H. Potts, `New Zealand Country Journal,' vol. xv. p. 103:

"The Cockney new chum soon learnt to `eat his toot,' and he quickly acquired a good position in the district."

<hw>Twenty-eight</hw>, n. another name for the Yellow-collared Parrakeet. Named from its note. See Parrakeet.

1848. J. Gould, `Birds of Australia,' vol. v. pl. 19:

"Platycercus Semitorquatus, Quoy and Gaim., Yellow-collared Parrakeet; Twenty-eight Parrakeet, Colonists of Swan River. It often utters a note which, from its resemblance to those words, has procured for it the appellation of `twenty-eight' Parrakeet from the Colonists; the last word or note being sometimes repeated five or six times in succession."