Among vegetable productions there are many roots, which are eaten by the natives. It is commonly the office of the women to dig for roots, for which purpose they carry a long pointed stick to loosen the earth, and that is afterwards scooped up by the fingers of the left hand. Their withered arms and hands, covered with earth by digging and scraping after food, resemble, as they advance in years, the limbs and claws of a quadruped more than those of a human being. In stiff soils, this operation of digging can only be performed when the earth is moist, but in loose sandy soils it may be always done, and, on this account, the visits of the natives to different spots are regulated by the season of the year; as, for example, the roots that grow in the clay are not in season, because not to be got at, in the parching and dry months of summer. No plant bearing seeds is allowed to be dug up after it has flowered, and the natives are very careful in observing this rule. A considerable portion of the time of the women and children is occupied in getting up the various eatable roots, which are either roasted, or else devoured in a raw state; some resembling onions and others potatoes in their flavour. One root, called the _mene_, has rather an acid taste, and when eaten alone, it is said to disorder the bowels; but the natives in the southern parts pound it between two stones, and sprinkle over it a few pinches of a kind of _earth_, which forms, together with the bruised root, a sort of paste, that is thought exceedingly good, and quite free from all injurious properties. A kind of paste, which is sometimes baked into a cake, is also formed of many other roots. All these grow wild, and are used exactly in their natural state, unless burning the leaves of one plant in dry seasons to improve the root, or similar trifling pains respecting their growth, can deserve the name of cultivation. The fungus is also greedily devoured by the unfastidious natives of Australia, and a kind of gum, resembling what is in England called _gum-tragacanth_, is very abundant and popular among them. One traveller, Captain Sturt, who was among the first to notice the use of this peculiar food, imagined that it was eaten only from dire necessity. Indeed, it is an amusing proof of the occasional errors into which hasty impressions will lead intelligent men, that he pities as "unfortunate creatures reduced to the last extremity" those who were, in reality, regaling themselves upon a favourite luxury. During summer the acacias, growing in swampy plains, are positively loaded with this gum, and the natives assemble in great numbers to feast upon it. On such occasions a sort of fair is held among those that frequent these yearly meetings, and fun, frolic, and quarrelling of every description prevail, as in similar meetings of our own countrymen.