Full grown young females are not allowed to eat the male opossum, the wallabie (linkara), the red kangaroo, the fish kelapko, the black duck, the widgeon, the whistling duck, the coote, the native companion, two turtles (rinka and tung-kanka), the emu, the emu’s egg, the snake (yarl-dakko), cray-fish which may have deformed claws, the female or the young from the pouch of any kangaroo, the musk duck, the white crane, the bandicoot, the wild dog, two kinds of fish (toor-rue and toitchock), the shag (yarrilla), the water mole (neewitke), the ground grub (ronk), the vegetable food eaten by the emu (war-itch), etc.  When menstruating, they are not allowed to eat fish of any kind, or to go near the water at all; it being one of their superstitions, that if a female, in that state, goes near the water, no success can be expected by the men in fishing.  Fish that are taken by the men diving under the cliffs, and which are always females about to deposit their spawn, are also forbidden to the native women.

Old men and women are allowed to eat anything, and there are very few things that they do not eat.  Among the few exceptions are a species of toad, and the young of the wombat, when very small, and before the hair is well developed.

Chapter IV.

PROPERTY IN LAND—­DWELLINGS—­WEAPONS—­IMPLEMENTS—­GOVERNMENT—­CUSTOMS—­ SOCIAL RELATIONS—­MARRIAGE—­NOMENCLATURE.

It has generally been imagined, but with great injustice, as well as incorrectness, that the natives have no idea of property in land, or proprietary rights connected with it.  Nothing can be further from the truth than this assumption, although men of high character and standing, and who are otherwise benevolently disposed towards the natives, have distinctly denied this right, and maintained that the natives were not entitled to have any choice of land reserved for them out of their own possessions, and in their respective districts.

In the public journals of the colonies the question has often been discussed, and the same unjust assertion put forth.  A single quotation will be sufficient to illustrate the spirit prevailing upon this point.  It is from a letter on the subject published in South Australian Register of the 1st August, 1840:—­“It would be difficult to define what conceivable proprietary rights were ever enjoyed by the miserable savages of South Australia, who never cultivated an inch of the soil, and whose ideas of the value of its direct produce never extended beyond obtaining a sufficiency of pieces of white chalk and red ochre wherewith to bedaub their bodies for their filthy corrobberies.”  Many similar proofs might be given of the general feeling entertained respecting the rights of the Aborigines, arising out of their original possession of the soil.  It is a feeling, however, that can only have originated in an entire ignorance of the habits, customs, and