[89] Most of the stations in the interior have the native names of the place given them; but they are often better known by the name of the stock-keepers in charge, as in the above instance, to which many others might be added.
[90] When on one occasion the head of a native was under examination, a gentleman present asked the wondering black, “if he knew what was doing to his head?” Blackee answered in the negative. “Why you will no more be able to catch kangaroos or opossums.” No sooner was this said, than the black started away in anger, seized and flourished his spear, exclaiming, “What for you do that? What for you do all the same that!” And the unfortunate manipulator of savage craniums, as also his companion, began to be apprehensive, that the practice of the science was in a high degree dangerous among uncivilized beings.
On another occasion, the temporal muscle was found unusually large in the head of a native black under investigation: this was remarked by the phrenologist to a gentleman who stood near him, at the same time squeezing it, and saying to blackee, “Cobbong (large) this.” “Ah!” exclaimed the black as he made off at a rapid pace, “me now see what you want; you want patta,” (eat) and escaped as quickly as possible from the ravenous cannibal appetite he supposed the phrenologist to possess.
[91] The black cockatoo usually feeds on the trees; the white species almost invariably upon the ground.
[92] The Murrumbidgee natives call grass by the general name of “Narluk,” but they bestow different names on distinct species. Those among the native blacks, who have pretensions to an acquaintance with the English language, call our hair grass.
[93] The plumage of this bird is green; legs and bill of an orange colour, with an orange mark under the eye; irides brown. Length of the male specimen seven inches and a-half. Its food is insects.
[94] The following extract, from the introduction to “Tuckey’s Unfortunate Expedition to explore the River Congo,” is curious as coinciding, as regards another portion of the globe, with the above remark.
“He named it” (alluding to Diego Cam) “the Congo, as that was the name of the country through which it flowed; but he afterwards found that the natives called it the Zaire, two names which, since that time, have been used indiscriminately by Europeans. It now appears that Zaire is the general appellative for any great river, like the Nile in North Africa, and the Ganges in Hindoostan; and that the native name of the individual river in question is Moienzi enzaddi, or the river which absorbs all other rivers.”—Introduction, page xi.
[95] “Damper” is merely a cake of flour and water, or milk, baked in the ashes; it is the usual mode of bread-making in the bush; it is sweet, wholesome, and excellent eating.
[96] The Americans employ several well-known methods to track bees to their hives. One of the most common, though ingenious modes, is to place a piece of bee-bread on a flat surface, a tile for instance, surrounding it with a circle of wet white paint. The bee, whose habit it is always to alight on the edge of any plane, has to travel through the paint to reach the bee-bread. When, therefore, she flies off, the observer can track her by the white on her body. The same operation is repeated at another place, at some distance from the first, and at right angles to the bee line just ascertained. The position of the hive is thus easily determined, for it lies in the angle made by the intersection of the bee lines. Another method is described in the Philosophical Transactions for 1721. The bee-hunter decoys, by a bait of honey, some of the bees into his trap; and when he has secured as many as he judges will suit his purpose, he encloses one in a tube, and, letting it fly, marks its course by a pocket compass. Departing to some distance, he liberates another, observes its course, and in this manner determines the position of the hive, upon the principle already detailed. These methods of bee-hunting depend upon the insect’s habit of always flying in a right line to its home. Those who have read Cooper’s tale of the “Prairie,” must remember the character of the bee-hunter, and the expression of “lining a bee to its hive.”—Insect Architecture, pp. 145, 146.