et
dirt into the oven. I have seen meat cooked by the natives in this
manner, which, when taken out, looked as clean and nicely roasted as any
I ever saw from the best managed kitchen.

If the oven is required for steaming food, a process principally applied
to vegetables and some kinds of fruits, the fire is in the same way
removed from the heated stones, but instead of putting on dry grass or
leaves, wet grass or water weeds are spread over them. The vegetables
tied up in small bundles are piled over this in the central part of the
oven, wet grass being placed above them again, dry grass or weeds upon
the wet, and earth over all. In putting the earth over the heap, the
natives commence around the base, gradually filling it upwards. When
about two-thirds covered up all round, they force a strong sharp-pointed
stick in three or four different places through the whole mass of grass
weeds and vegetables, to the bottom of the oven. Upon withdrawing the
stick, water is poured through the holes thus made upon the hissing
stones below, the top grass is hastily closed over the apertures and the
whole pile as rapidly covered up as possible to keep in the steam. The
gathering vegetable food, and in fact the cooking and preparing of food
generally, devolves upon the women, except in the case of an emu or a
kangaroo, or some of the larger and more valuable animals, when the men
take this duty upon themselves.

In cooking vegetables, a single oven will suffice for three or four
families, each woman receiving the same bundles of food when cooked,
which she had put in. The smaller kinds of fish and shell-fish, birds and
animals, frogs, turtle, eggs, reptiles, gums, etc., are usually broiled
upon the embers. Roots, bark of trees, etc., are cooked in the hot ashes.
Fungi are either eaten raw or are roasted. The white ant is always eaten
raw. The larvae of insects and the leaves of plants are either eaten raw
or in a cooked state. The larger animals, as the kangaroo, emu, native
dog, etc. and the larger fishes, are usually roasted in the oven.

In preparing the food for the cooking process a variety of forms are
observed. In most animals, as the opossum, wallabie, dog, kangaroo, etc.
the the bones of the legs are invariably broken, and the fur is singed
off; a small aperture is made in the belly, the entrails withdrawn, and
the hole closed with a wooden skewer, to keep in the gravy whilst
roasting. The entrails of all animals, birds,