The reader will see that this mode of tracking the bee to its home is far inferior to that of the American bee-hunters, and is rather a business of the legs than of the head. The Australian bee-hunter waits until a bee happens to come to the spot where he lies; the American bee-hunter baits an attractive trap, and induces the insect to come to the spot which he selects. Then the Australian bee-hunter only runs after the single bee; whereas the American bee-hunter economizes his strength by employing two bees, and saving his legs.
He puts honey on a flat wooden slab, having drawn a circle of white paint round it. The bee alights on the honey, and, after filling its crop, crawls through the white paint and sets off homeward. The hunter follows the “bee-line” taken by the insect, and marks it by scoring or “blazing” a few trees. He then removes his honeyed trap to a spot at an angle with his former station and repeats the process. There is no need for him to race after the flying bee, and to run considerable risk of damaging himself more or less seriously; he simply follows out the lines which the two bees have taken, and, by fixing on the point at which they meet, walks leisurely up to the nest.
Having found his bee nest, the Australian loses no time in ascending to the spot, whether it be a cleft in a rock, or, as is usually the case, a hole in a tree. This latter spot is much favored by the bees, as well as by many of the arboreal mammals, of which there are so many in Australia. The sudden and violent tempests which rage in that part of the world tear off the branches of trees and hurl them to the ground. During succeeding rainy seasons, the wet lodges in the broken branch, and by degrees rots away the wood, which is instantly filled with the larvæ of beetles, moths, flies, and other insects that feed upon decaying wood. Thus, in a few years, the hollow extends itself until it burrows into the tree itself, and sometimes descends nearly from the top to the bottom, thus forming an admirable locality for the bees.
Taking with him a hatchet, a basket, and a quantity of dry grass or leaves, the native ascends, lights the grass, and under cover of the smoke chops away the wood until he can get at the combs, which he places in the basket, with which he descends. Should he be too poor to possess even a basket, he extemporizes one by cutting away the bark of the tree; and should the nest be a very large one, he is supplied by his friends from below with a number of vessels, and passes them down as fast as they are filled.
Perhaps some of my readers may remark that honey cannot be rightly considered as insect food, and that it ought to have been ranked among the vegetable productions. The Australian, however, does not content himself with extracting the honey from the comb, but eats it precisely in the state in which it is brought from the nest. As the bees are not forced, as amongst English bee-masters, to keep their honey-cells distinct from those which contain the hoard and the “bee-bread,” each comb contains indiscriminately bee-bread, young bee-grubs, and honey, and the Australian eats all three with equal satisfaction.
Another kind of insect food is a grub which inhabits the trunks of trees, and of which the natives are inordinately fond. They have a wonderful faculty of discovering the presence of this grub, and twist it out of its hole with an odd little instrument composed of a hook fastened to the end of a slender twig. This implement is carried in the hair so as to project over the ear, like a clerk’s pen, and for a long time puzzled travellers, who thought it to be merely an ornament, and could not understand its very peculiar shape.
The larva is the caterpillar of a moth which is closely allied to the goat-moth of our own country, and has the same habit of burrowing into the wood of living trees. The hooked instrument which is used for drawing them out of their holes is called the “pileyah,” and is employed also for hooking beetles, grubs, and other insects out of their holes in the ground. When the pileyah is used for extracting grubs from the earth, the ground is first loosened by means of a wooden scoop that looks something like a hollowed waddy. The pileyah is then tied to the end of a polygonum twig of sufficient length, and by such means can be introduced into the holes.
Perhaps the most celebrated of the various insect banquets in which the Australians delight is that which is furnished by the bugong moth, as the insect is popularly, but wrongly, called. Instead of belonging to the moth tribe, it is one of the butterflies, and belongs to the graceful family of the Heliconidæ. Its scientific name is Euplœa hamata. The bugong is remarkable for the fact that its body, instead of being slender like that of most butterflies, is very stout, and contains an astonishing amount of oily matter. The color of the insect is dark brown, with two black spots on the upper wings. It is a small insect, measuring only an inch and a half across the wings.
It is found in the New South Wales district, and inhabits a range of hills that are called from the insect the Bugong Mountains. The Australians eat the bugong butterflies just as locusts are eaten in many parts of the world, and, for the short time during which the insect makes its appearance, feast inordinately upon it, and get quite fat. The following account is given by Mr. G. Bennett:—
“After riding over the lower ranges, we arrived a short distance above the base of the Bugong Mountain, tethered the horses, and ascended on foot, by a steep and rugged path, which led us to the first summit of the mountain: at this place, called Ginandery by the natives, enormous masses of granite rock, piled one upon another, and situated on the verge of a wooded precipice, excited our attention. An extensive and romantic view was here obtained of a distant, wooded, mountainous country.