70 Miscellaneous. 



the cell to which it is fixed. These movements continue for a 

 considerable time after the animal inhabiting the cell has been dead. 

 A hollow rounded process, with a hair-like curved and moveable fila- 

 ment projecting from it, is also fixed upon the corresponding part of 

 each cell of the Cellularia repians. I'hese moveable hair-like fila- 

 ments are analogous to the moveable bird-head process attached to 

 each of the cells of Flustra avicularis. — Proceedings of the St. Andrews' 

 Lit. and Phil. Soc, Nov. 1844. 



FOOD OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATIVES. 



Mr. Hodgkinson, in his 'Australia, from Port Macquarie to More- 

 ton Bay, with Description of the Natives, their Manners and Customs,' 

 &c., gives a somewhat elaborate account of Australian field-sports, 

 and of the Aborigines. On the immediate banks of the MacLeay 

 river, he says, there are no fewer than six distinct tribes ; besides 

 several others near the sources of the river among the mountains. 

 All these tribes are able to get an abundance of food with very little 

 trouble, and add the reptile kingdom to the ordinary sources : — 



"All the larger varieties of snakes are eaten by them, but they will 

 never touch one that has been killed by a white man. Guanas,, and 

 a short thick kind of lizard called the dew-lizard, are also much 

 relished by them. However repugnant the idea of eating reptiles 

 seems to us, it is from a real liking for their flesh that the Australian 

 savages eat them, and not from the great scarcity of better food ; 

 for I have on two or three occasions known them, when employed 

 by me in assisting at the cattle-musters, pulling maize, &c., and well- 

 fed on bread and beef, carefully preserve any snake they chanced to 

 kill, and cook and eat it at the next fire. Induced by curiosity, I 

 have on several occasions tasted the flesh of every one of the reptiles 

 just mentioned, and although nothing but the most extreme hunger 

 could make me conquer my aversion so as to dine on them, I must 

 nevertheless own, that not one of them possessed any disagreeable 

 taste. The flesh of the black snake in particular was rich and juicy, 

 somewhat resembling in flavour the flesh of a sucking-pig, whilst 

 that of the guana was whiter and drier, and more approximated to 

 fowl. Besides, these savages are not the only race of men who eat 

 reptiles, for the common water- snake of England (^Natrix torquatd) 

 is eaten in several parts of the continent of Europe ; and every one 

 knows that the guana of the West Indies (a much more hideous ani- 

 mal, by-the-by, than the guana of Australia) is considered very 

 good eating by the planters in some of the islands." 



MR. SCHOMBURGk's COLLECTIONS IN GUIANA. 



It appears from the report of the Chev. Schomburgk, read at a 

 recent meeting of the Geographical Society, that notwithstanding 

 the great difficulty of conveying collections of natural history over 

 such a country as that traversed by him, and the frequent loss of 

 objects collected with great pains, he has deposited in the British 



