and today not only spc;iks it fluently 

 u , u | with an extensive vocabulary, 

 but can also read and write. He makes 

 no more grammatical errors than a 

 while Australian of equivalent educa- 



lion - 



When L. Hercus first discovered 



hitn in l' )h5 ' on ,hc advicc of Dr - 

 Catherine Ellis, as a valuable infor- 

 mant for Madirnadi. he had for- 

 gotten .ill hut a few words of Dadi- 

 dadi perhaps because, as he recounts— 



i lost my mother when I was a little 

 fellow baby; Sfie gol poisoned in them 

 cufly days They used to poison the 



potatoes, fruits and all that, and put 

 them out for the rabbits; il killed a lot 

 of rabbils loo, rabbits were so bad; and 

 she happened to eat one somehow or 

 other and she passed away". 



That the rabbits were a serious 

 pest south of the Murray in the 

 'seventies and across the Murray by 

 188Q is a matter of record, and the 

 method of extermination he describes 

 was commonly used". The most 

 usual poison was strychnine and one 

 wonders how many other unwarned 

 Aborigines met an untimely and 

 horrible death. 



