304 



THE POOD OP THE TASMANIAN ABORIGINES. 



The above investigations have solved that problen: 

 which so greatly puzzled the early explorers and colo- 

 nists, namely, the voracity of the Aborigines on one side, 

 and their hunger for bread, flour, or potatoes on the 

 other, Dixon says : — " As their subsistence was pre- 

 carious, their gluttony was great." Davies explains their 

 voracity to a certain extent as Ling Roth thinks : — 

 " They were often a long time without food, and then ate 

 it in large quantities. . . . The enormous quantity of food 

 which they are capable of eating, when they have an 

 opportunity, would scarcely be credited. A native 

 woman, at the settlement at Flinders Island, was one 

 day watched by the officers, and seen to eat between fifty 

 and sixty eggs of the ' sooty petrel ' (Procelearia spec), 

 (i) besides a double allowance of bread. These eggs 

 exceed those of a duck in size." 



We now know that it was not lack of food that made 

 them voracious, but its composition, which was unsuit- 

 able to sustain Hfe if eaten in small quantities only. 



We also understand now why the Aborigines were so 

 particularly fond of bread, flour, and potatoes. One 

 authority (O'Connor) goes in that respect as far as to 

 say: — "The chief thing they want is bread, and they 

 prefer getting a sack of flour by robbing a hut than to 

 hunting opossums." All these articles of food are those 

 that contain the carbo-hydrates, and by being particu- 

 larly fond of them the Aborigines simply satisfied the un- 

 conscious craving of their body after non-nitrogenous, in 

 particular carbo hydraceous food. 



There is also another aspect of their essentially nitro- 

 genous diet : All proteid foods are " tissue builders " or 

 " flesh formers," while the non-nitrogenous group — the 

 '' respiratory or calorilicient food " — has the function in it 

 to furnish fuel in order to maintain animal heat. The great 

 deficiency of the carbo-hydrates in the diet of the Tas- 

 manians made it therefore extremely difficult for them to 

 maintain the animal heat, and it is probable that sufficient 

 temperature was only maintained at the expense of the 

 muscular tissue. If this be so, there was a great waste of 

 bodily strength, notwithstanding the enormous quanti- 

 ties of food thev consumed, and this asrain must have 



(i) Now called Piiffius teniiirostris. 



