METHODS OF HUNTING 289 



intelligences who have taken advantage of chance dis- 

 coveries, and turned them into lasting benefits to their 

 fellows. 



In the art of fishing the native black is very skilful, 

 and he uses a great variety of contrivances for the capture 

 of marine and fluvial creatures. Sea-going canoes have 

 never, to my knowledge, been in use among the aborigines ; 

 but in some parts of the country they use rafts, which 

 enable them to cross straits and reach islands that are at 

 no great distance from the coast. From those rafts they 

 occasionally fish ; but the usual method is to stand on 

 the sea-shore, and with hook and line capture the littoral 

 species of fish. Formerly the blackfellow made his own 

 hooks from pieces of bone ; but for a long time past most 

 of the tribes, except those far in the interior of the 

 country, have contrived to become possessed of the wire- 

 hooks of civilised man. But the favourite way of fishing 

 is by means of nets. In the manufacture of nets the 

 aborigines are exceedingly skilful, and some of those 

 made for the capture of wildfowl, etc., are of very great 

 size ; long enough to go right across a small river, and high 

 enough, when elevated on poles, to intercept the flying 

 ducks and other birds which it is the object of the netter 

 to capture. The nets are put into position at the dusk 

 of evening, and the birds become entangled in them as 

 they fly home to roost. 



The twine of which the nets are made is neatly spun 

 by the women from a kind of flax which grows in marshes 

 and near rivers in nearly all parts of the country ; and I 

 have seen nets made of rushes and grasses. Although 

 the poor women have not the advantages of our tools and 

 methods, the workmanship of their nets is very beautiful, 

 and superior to ours. 



The nets used for the capture of fish are mostly hand- 

 nets. These are short lengths of net fastened between 

 two sticks, and the fishers may either enter the water in 

 numbers and join hands, forming a large circle in which 

 the fish are enclosed and driven into shallow water, where 

 they are easily captured, or the men may work singly, in 



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