i PEIMITIVE TILLEKS OF THE GROUND 3 



leaves. Like country children here, then, they had 

 learnt to distinguish between the things which can 

 be eaten by hungry people and those which cannot. 



What else did they know ? It would seem 

 very little. They knew that it was not wise to 

 root up all the yams of a district, to pluck all the 

 seed-pods of a bush, for that would mean that in 

 other years they might get no more. Therefore, 

 they wandered about from place to place, never com- 

 pletely exhausting a neighbourhood, and allowing 

 time for the plants to grow again before they came 

 back. 



The natives knew also that there was a difference 

 in the times of the year when the different kinds 

 of food were ready. We perhaps know a wood 

 where the wild strawberries are ripe in June, and 

 when the calendar on the wall marks June we 

 say : " Next Saturday we will go to that wood to 

 seek for strawberries." But the Australian natives 

 had no calendar. They had to watch the sun, to say 

 to themselves : " When the sun is very high in the 

 heavens at mid-day we get such and such seeds ; as 

 the mid-day sun gets lower it is time to search for 

 such and such roots." But at best it was a hard 

 and cruel life. It is true that there is no winter 

 in Australia like our winter, but still think of a 

 country where there were no barns because there 

 was nothing to put in barns ; think what would 



