
478 RECORDS OF THE S.A. MUSEUM 
buck rabbit, to the lordly ‘old man’, squatting six feet high on his hams and tail, 
the brutes live, increase and flourish, On the flats wild turkeys are plentiful, and 
on the lagoons on the timbered flats stretching northward from the foot of Mt. 
Graham wild duck, teal, geese, and swan abound at certain seasons of the year.’’ 
Deraiteo Account or THE Animat Foops AVAILABLE. 
MAMMALS. 
Cannreatism, As with natives in other parts of Australia, the Buandik abo- 
rigines sometimes practised cannibalism. 
Unpublished manuscript notes of the late Duncan Stewart contain the state- 
ment that infants, when disposed of, were ‘‘sometimes eaten’’. 
Stewart’s mother, Mrs. James Smith, also wrote (p. 8) coucerning this custorn = 
‘*Many of the women ate their offspring; they said it was a part of their flesh and 
made them strong.’’ 
MArsuptats AND Monotremes, The natives of the Coorong near the Narrows 
(G. F. Angas, p. 189) constructed “elevated seats or platforms in bushy she-oak 
trees for the purpose of watching and spearing the emu and kangaroo as they 
pass towards the water to drink’’, 
T am indebted to Mr. H, H, Finlayson for supplying me with information as 
to the oceurrence in the South-East of various mammals that may have served a8 
food for the natives. and as to their likely prevalence before the coming of the 
white man. The marsupials have been arranged, in general, in order of preva- 
lence. The length of the head and body (L,) given iv millimetres is from Wood 
Jones’ Mammals of South Australia and indicates the sizes of the animals, Some 
approximate weights (W.) were supplied by Mr. D. Schulz of Rendlesham and 
others are from Brough Smyth’s The Aborigines of Victoria, The native names 
given here and elsewhere are from Mrs. James Smith’s vocabulary. 
Gray Kangaroo (Macropus gigantews), Koora, Koor-aa, a male ‘‘forrester'’ kan- 
garoo; Mare-e, a female ‘‘forrester’’ kangaroo (Mrs. Smith). L. 1500 mm., 
W,. 100 1b, (Schulz) ; 150 lb. (Brough Smyth), 
Tn the unpublished manoseript on the Buandik by the late Duncan Stewart, 
the following note appears: ‘In the year 1846, kangaroos were not by any account 
plentiful; although some twenty-five years later they became so numerous that 
the Government and the settlers bad to employ men to destroy them, as they were 
devouring nearly all the feed. They became almost as much a plague as rabbits 
are at the present time. The dying out of the natives might, to some degree, ac- 
count for the increase of the marsupials. Some fifty thousand were destroyed in 
five years.”’ 
Ebenezer Ward, writing in 1869, referred (p. 12) to the kangaroo nuisance 
as having acquired ‘‘the most astonishing and serious proportions’’ from the 
pastoralists’ point of view, The owners of two Mount Benson runs had paid 
the natives for 30,000 head at 6d. each. He himself had on one occaston seen a 
moh ‘‘that could only be counted by thousands,’' This great prevalence of kan- 
garoos seems to have been in general attributed to the disappearance of the natives 
who, previously to the disturbing effect on aboriginal life of the white usurpation, 
had kept the numbers in check, 
The Cyclopedia of South Australia, published in 1909, referring tp the Mt, 
Gambier district (Vol, II, p. 954) says that: - 
