Polygamy is permitted among the Australian aborigines: each takes as many wives as he pleases, or can maintain, and can dismiss or assign them over at pleasure; but many have only one wife, not taking another until she is dismissed. Some of the women of the interior tribes have fine forms, tolerably handsome features, and fine curled hair; the generality, however, of both males and females, are not conspicuous for personal beauty. After wet weather they track game with much facility, and from the late rains the hunting expeditions had been very successful; game was therefore abundant at the camp, which consisted of opossums, flying squirrels, bandicoots, snakes, &c. I purchased, for a small piece of tobacco, the skin (the fur of which is remarkably fine) of a very handsome light grey flying squirrel, called by the natives _Min, ugo_, (and also _Bango_ and _Berat_.) It is surprising the distance these animals “fly,” or spring, aided by the membrane extending from the sides between the fore and hind legs. The little sugar squirrel has been known to leap a distance of forty yards, from an elevation of _thirty feet_ to the butt of a tree, across a river. One of the opossums among the game was a female which had two large-sized young ones in her pouch; the delicate morsels were at this time broiling, unskinned, and undrawn, upon the fire, whilst the “old mother” was lying yet unflayed in the basket. It was amusing to see with what rapidity and expertness the animals were skinned and embowelled by the blacks; the offal was thrown to the dogs, but as such a waste on the part of the natives does not often take place, we can only presume it is when game, as it was at present, is very abundant—the dogs are usually in poor condition, from getting a very precarious supply of provender: the liver being extracted, and gall-bladder removed, a stick was thrust through the animal, which was either thrown upon the ashes to broil, or placed upon a wooden spit before the fire to roast; whether the food was removed from the fire cooked, or only half-dressed, depended entirely on the state of their appetites: the flesh of the animals at this time preparing for dinner by our tawny friends appeared delicate, and was no doubt excellent eating, as the diet of the animals was in most instances vegetable. The natives are as dirty in general habits as in cookery, and this _unclean_ race were often seen as “chimney ornaments” in the settlers’ habitations, placing themselves on each side of the fire-place, or almost in the hearth, to get warm, looking like a huge piece of charred wood, and forming objects neither useful nor ornamental; they have a great antipathy to any thing like labour, (I do not mean to disparage the race by this observation, for all uncultivated tribes are similar in this respect,) and the only way to get rid of them whenever they became troublesome, was to set them to work.