Note 183 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

2º. Variety of food. There is a great variety. Concerning S. W. Australia Gerland enumerates 6 kinds of kangaroos, 29 of fish, two of seals; and further wild dogs, emus and other birds, tortoises, opossums, frogs, shell-fish, grubs of beetles, bird’s eggs, mice, rats, snakes and lizards; roots, mushrooms, resins and various fruits183. But this list, including (as Gerland remarks) everything eatable, proves only that they live very poorly. The natives of South Australia also, according to Eylmann, though they have a great many kinds of food, seldom live in abundance. During the frequent times of drought they suffer severely from want of food184. In Central Australia “with certain restrictions … everything which is edible is used for food”185. And as for fishing, though fish enters for a large part into the subsistence of the coast tribes, there are no fishing tribes in the higher sense in Australia, like those of the Pacific Coast. Their canoes, where they have any, are very primitive; and the principal means of catching fish are by spearing and setting traps186.