50 THE RIVER DARLING 



few are actually deformed. The men average 5 feet 

 8 inches in height, and owing to their thinness of build 

 look even taller ; and they are active and quick in their 

 movements. Many of the women are of diminutive 

 stature, and their husbands treat them with great 

 brutality. The knocking of a woman senseless with a 

 waddy is a punishment to which the husband resorts on the 

 slightest provocation, or when he is in a surly temper. 



The largest fish in the Darling is the Murray-cod which 

 sometimes weighs 60 lbs., and quite frequently over 40. 

 It is the shape of a cod-fish with a spotted skin, and is 

 esteemed greatly by the colonists for its delicate flavour. 

 The blacks catch it in a hand-net which they enter the 

 water to manipulate ; but it bites freely at a bait, and 

 affords excellent sport. The best baits are grasshoppers, 

 a large hymenopterus fly and its larvae, which is found in 

 abundance on the river-banks, and earth-worms. 



Birds have suffered greatly from the guns of the 

 squatters, but they are still very numerous on those parts 

 of the river which are farthest from the townships and 

 stations. Parrots and cockatoos are there in great variety, 

 and ducks and rails at one time swarmed on the river, and 

 on every billabung and water-hole in the district. 



One of the commonest cockatoos on the Darling is the 

 rose-breasted {Cacatua roseicapilld)^ which is of alight grey 

 colour with a beautiful crimson breast and a white poll. 

 The pale yellow-crested {C. galerita) and a black variety 

 (Calyptorhynchus bankst) are also found on some of the 

 reaches. The yellow-crested and the rose-breasted are 

 sometimes seen in flocks which number thousands, and 

 when they are all screaming together the noise is extra- 

 ordinary. Bank's black cockatoo is not so numerous, and 

 is local. Where it is found the flock seldom number more 

 than a dozen to twenty individuals. It is not such a 

 noisy bird as the white species. The cockatiel {Callopsit- 

 tacus novce kollandice) is also found in great numbers. 

 Though the flocks are not so large as those of the white 

 and grey cockatoos, they are more numerous, and as many 

 as five or six hundred birds may sometimes be seen 



