BEE-HUNTING BY THE NATIVES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 149, 10 March 1876, Page 8

BEE-HUNTING BY THE NATIVES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

WALES. Having seen a bee alight on any twig or leaf, the black takes a little bit of the finest down of a feather, a-id rolling it up between his fingora at one end, cautiously steals upon the bee, and dexterously places the down upon its back, to which the honey makes it adhere. Away soars the bee at once, high into the air, and away sours the savage's eye after it, his head being thrown back, and his whole gaze concentrated upon that one speck in the sky. As the bee advances, the black keeps as nearly under him as possible, careering along at full speed, stumbling over boughs and bushes, leaping over bogs and holes, and heedless of scratches and bruises, and everything else, but the speck of. white down which is guiding him to the lofty gum tr. c, in the topmost boughs of which lies his dinner for that day. Having traced the bee to his retreat, he procures a quantity of clean string bark, which he tears up into a mass resembling dried moss, or, more nearly still, the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk when torn. This is to place the honey upon. He then, with his tomahaw k, cuts into the hollow branch wLere the hive is, feasts on it himself, and '.akes the remainder down in the stringy bark, which, if much adheres to it, lie afterwards sucks, so that nothing may be lost. — Henderson's ' Excursions in New South Wales.'