22 



After the first appearance of wild geese at the billabongs 

 and lagoons, the women are not allowed to eat of their meat, 

 believing that if they did so the geese would become lean and 

 bony." Only after the geese have settled for some consider- 

 able time in a certain locality are the gins allowed to par- 

 take of this food. 



The clever imitation of the cries and calls of these birds, 

 a ^^ ngd ngclng, ngdng-nqdng-midrig" induces large numbers 

 of them to be attracted, at dusk, close to the native, who sits 

 in the branches of a tree, and kills the birds with a stick. 



These birds can also be lured, by imitating their call, so 

 close to a native seated motionless in high grass that they 

 can be actually grasped by hand. 



The note of the whistling duck ( Dendrocygrui et/fonl) is 

 also accurately reproduced, by which flocks of them are at- 

 tracted and killed with a throwing-stick while hovering round 

 the hiding native. Cockatoos, plovers, and other birds are se- 

 cured in a similar manner. 



The presence or whereabouts of crocodiles fC. jjorosi/sj 

 and dugongs (Tialicore australis) in water is traced by the 

 swirl and bubbles produced at the surface, and they are spear- 

 ed from a raft or canoe. A dugong is further detected, when 

 feeding below the surface of the sea, by noting the nibbled 

 portions of seaweed rising to the top. Young crocodiles are 

 caught by hand from the bows of a canoe by cautiously 

 drifting upon them as they float in the water. 



The natives explain that the teeth of young crocodiles 

 have not hardened sufficiently to do harm, and they even 

 show no fear while swimming about among full-grown in- 

 dividuals. 



When a dugong has been killed by being speared from 

 a canoe, the craft is submerged, the occupants swimming 

 alongside and pulling it under the floating carcass of the 

 prey. The water is then bailed out of the canoe, which 

 rises, and lifts the dugong with it, and it is rowed ashore 

 by the hunters. 



A turtle is caught by diving after it from a canoe, with 

 a line, and passing a slipknot round one of its paddles, when 

 it is hauled to the surface. If the head of a swimming turtle 

 be seized and held upwards towards the surface of the water 

 it is helpless so far as escape by diving is concerned. Har- 

 pooning is also widely practised. 



In the folklore of the Larrekiyas the fresh-water turtle, 

 known to them as pcnnimell, once lived in the sea; and the 



* Cf. Stretton's remarks on the eating of flving fox : Trana. 

 Roy. vS(>c., S.A., vol. xvii., 1893. p. 240. 



