[39] Besides the vine, other fruit-tree cuttings blossom and even bear fruit in a very short period of time. I saw a peach cutting, in a garden near Sydney, about six inches long, which had been planted only ten days, and was covered with a profusion of blossoms.
[40] The box-tree of the colonists (Eucalyptus, sp.) is used in the colony for the spokes and fellies of wheels, and the “apple-tree” (Angophora lanceolata) for the naves.
[41] The “turpentine tree” attains the elevation of from sixty to ninety feet, and a diameter of three feet.
[42] Mount York, according to Oxley, is 3,292 feet above the level of the sea.
[43] “Pi” signifies “to hit or break,” and “cobera,” “head.”
[44] It has been stated frequently to me, that the females destroying their offspring allege as a reason, that they are too much trouble to carry about: however, it is well known, that, as their children become older, they evince much attachment towards them.
[45] This is not confined to the Australian natives, for it also occurs in Polynesia. Spix and Martius also observe, in their Travels in Brazil, (Eng. Trans. 8vo. vol. ii. p. 241,) “We did not meet with any deformed persons or cripples among the Indians; for which reason, some people believe that they put them to death immediately after their birth.”
[46] “Netbul,” (the net-bag of the aborigines,) is a corrupted native word; “culy” is one of the native appellations.
[47] Those philanthropic individuals who think to change the habits of these savage tribes, expecting those who have lived from the earliest period of their existence on the produce of the chase, to abandon their wandering life, and settle down to cultivate the soil—an employment to which they are quite unaccustomed—can never have reflected how difficult, even in our boasted civilized state, it is to change habits acquired in early childhood. “Men,” observes Hartley, in his Essays on Man, (page 190,) “are brought to any thing almost sooner than to change their habit of life, especially when the change is either inconvenient or made against the force of natural inclination, or with the loss of accustomed indulgences. It is,” he continues, “the most difficult of all things to convert men from vicious habits to virtuous ones, as every one may judge from what he feels in himself as well as from what he sees in others.” “It is almost,” says Paley, after making the above quotation in his Evidences of Christianity, “like making men over again.”
[48] At New Zealand the placenta is named “fenua,” which word signifies land. It is applied by the natives to the placenta, from their supposing it to be the residence of the child: on being discharged, it is immediately buried with great care, as they have the superstitious idea that the priests, if offended, would procure it; and, by praying over it, occasion the death of both mother and child, by “praying them to death,” to use their own expression.