268 
REPTILES AND GRUBS. 
“ wharro,” which is dragged along by two or three 
of them close to the bottom where the water is not 
too deep. 
Frogs are dug out of the ground by the women, 
or caught in the marshes, and used in every stage 
from the tadpole upwards. 
Rats are also dug out of the ground, but they are 
procured in the greatest numbers and with the utmost 
facility when the approach of the floods in the river 
flats compels them to evacuate their domiciles. A 
variety is procured among the scrubs under a singular 
pile or nest which they make of sticks, in the shape 
of a hay-cock, three or four feet high and many feet 
in circumference. A great many occupy the same 
pile and are killed with sticks as they run out. 
Snakes, lizards and other reptiles are procured 
among the rocks or in the scrubs. Grubs are got 
out of the gum-tree into which they eat their way, 
as also out of the roots of the mimosa, the leaves of 
the zamia, the trunk of the xanthorra, and a variety 
of other plants and shrubs. 
One particularly large white grub, and a great 
bon-bouche to the natives, is procured out of the 
ground. It is about four inches long and half an 
inch in thickness, and is obtained by attaching a 
thin narrow hook of hard wood to the long, wiry 
shoots of the polygonum, and then pushing this 
gently down the hole through which the grub has 
burrowed into the earth until it is hooked. Grubs 
are procured at a depth of seven feet in this way 
without the delay or trouble of digging. 
