BY J. H. MAIDEN. 527 



In the summer months the swamps containing this plant diy 

 up, and it withers completely away, but the spore cases remain. 

 In former years (and even now in remote disti-icts) the natives 

 used to collect these, grind them between two stones, so as to 

 make a kind of flour or meal, which they made into paste and 

 used as an article of food. 



Nardoo contains but little nutritive matter, and must be 

 exceedingly difiicult to digest. 



Nevertheless the ft-uits of this plant (or perhaps Seshania 

 aculeata - see Bailey's remarks under that head) were the diet 

 the Burke and Wills expedition were at one period i-educed to. 

 The following quotation from Wills' Journal is taken from 

 Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria : — " I cannot understand 

 this nardoo at all ; it certainly will not agree with me in any 

 form. We are now reduced to it alone, and we manage to get 

 from four to five pounds a day between us. . . . It seems 

 to give us no nutriment. . . . Starvation on nardoo is by no 

 means very unpleasant, but for the weakness one feels and the 

 utter inability to move oneself, for, as far as appetite is con- 

 cerned, it gives me the greatest satisfaction." 



To Dr. Beckler is due the credit of having pointed out, first of 

 all, when releasing Lyons and Macpherson from their perilous 

 position, that the Marsilea fruit formed part of tlie food of some 

 of the aboriginal inland tribes, the use of the plant having provi- 

 dentially been communicated to Lyons and his companion by the 

 natives Previously we were not awai'e of the economic utility 

 of this kind of fern (Mueller, Trans. RS. Victoria, 1862). 



For full notes and physiological observations on the Nardoo 

 Plant, loc. cii. 



In Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria, L, 383, will be 

 found a drawing of these stones, such as are used by the nati\'es 

 of the Darling. The following description is given : — 



