rroboree. The
next morning at daylight they would erect their net into a sort of
triangular-shaped yard, one side open. Black fellows would be stationed
at each end of the net, and at stated intervals along the mirroon, as
the net was called. When the others were all ready some of the blacks
would make a wide circle round the emu, leaving open the side towards
the net; they would close in gradually until they frightened the emu
off her nest; she would run in the direction where she saw no black
fellows and where the net was; the black fellows closing in behind,
followed quickly. Poor Noorunglely floundered into the net, up rushed a
black fellow and, seizing her, wrung her neck. Having secured her, they
would next secure her eggs; that they might be a trifle stale was a
matter of indifference to them.

Another old method was by making sort of brush yards and catching the
emus in these.

One modern way is to run them down with kangaroo dogs, the same way
with kangaroo; but at one time still another method obtained. A black
fellow would get a long spear and fasten on the end a bunch of emu
feathers. When he sighted an emu he would climb a tree, break some
boughs to place beneath him, if the trees were thinly foliaged, to hide
him from the emu, then he would let his spear dangle down. The emu, a
most inquisitive bird, seeing the emu feathers, would investigate.
Directly the bird was underneath the tree, the black fellow would grip
his spear tightly and throw it at the emu, rarely, if ever, failing to
hit it, though the emu might run wounded for a short distance, but the
black fellow would be quickly after it to give it happy despatch.

If the emu got a good start even, it was easily tracked by the trail of
blood. It has happened that a black fellow has not found his emu until
the next day, when it was dead and the spear still in it; but usually
very soon after the wounded birds start running the spear is shaken
out.

Sometimes the blacks killed birds with their boomerangs, ducks in
particular. I fancy this killing of ducks by a well-thrown boomerang is
one of the feats that black fellows allow themselves to blow about.
Every man has usually one subject, a speciality he considers of his
own, and on that subject he waxes eloquent.

Pigeons, gilahs, and plains turkeys are also killed with boomerangs.
Blacks' fishing-nets are about ten feet by five, a stick run through
each end, for choice of Eurah wood. Eurah is a pretty