Part 49 (1/2)

”We also ate the Australian cherry, which has its stone, not on the outside, enclosing the fruit, as the usual phrase would indicate, but on the end with the fruit behind it The stone is only about the size of a sweet-pea, and the fruit only about twice that size, altogether not unlike a yew-berry, but of a very pale red It grows on a tree just like an arbor vitae, and is well tasted, though not at all like a cherry in flavour”

1877 F v Mueller, `Botanic Teachings,' p 40:

”The principal of these kinds of trees received its generic na D'Entrecasteaux's Expedition It was our common Exocarpus cupressiformis, which he described, and which has beenits stone outside of the pulp That this crude notion of the structure of the fruit is erroneous, htful contelance, that the red edible part of our ordinary exocarpus constitutes ed and succulent fruit-stalklet (pedicel), and that the hard dry and greenish portion, strangely co the seed”

1889 J H `Maiden, `Useful Native Plants,' p 30:

”The fruit is edible The nut is seated on the enlarged succulent pedicel This is the poor little fruit of which so lish descriptions of the peculiarities of the Australian flora It has been likened to a cherry with the stone outside (hence the vernacular na Herald,' Aug 19, p 7, col 1:

”Grass-trees and the brown brake-fern, whips of native cherry, and all the threads and tangle of the earth's green russet veste between us and the water, their leaf heads tinselled by the light”

<hw>Cherry-picker</hw>, n bird-name See quotation

1848 J Gould, `Birds of Australia,' vol iv p 70:

”Melithreptus Validirostris, Gould Strong-billed Honey-eater [qv] Cherry-picker, colonists of Van Diemen's Land”

<hw>Chestnut Pine</hw>, n See Pine

<hgah-bag</hw>, n Queensland aboriginal pigeon-English for Sugar-bag (qv)

<hw>chinkie</hw>, n slang for a Chinaman ”John,”

short for John Chinaman, is commoner

1882 A J Boyd, `Old Colonials,' p 233:

”The pleasant traits of character in our colonialised `chinkie,'

as he is vulgarly terle variation `Chow')”

<hw>Chock-and-log</hw>, n and adj a particular kind of fence much used on Australian stations The Chock is a thick short piece of wood laid flat, at right-angles to the line of the fence, with notches in it to receive the Logs, which are laid lengthwise from Chock to Chock, and the fence is raised in four or five layers of this chock-and-log to forh-hewn or split, not sawn

1872 G S Baden-Powell,'New Homes for the Old Country,' p 207:

”Another fence, known as `chock and log,' is co on piles of chocks, or short blocks of wood”

1890 `The Argus' Sept 20, p 13, col 5:

”And to finish the Riverine picture, there coround, leaping through the air, bounding over the wire and `chock-and-log' fences like so many india-rubber automatons”

<hw>Choeropus</hw>, n the scientific naenus of Australian marsupial anifooted-Bandicoot (qv), and see Bandicoot (Grk choiros, a pig, and pous, foot) The animal is about the size of a rabbit, and is confined to the inland parts of Australia

<hw>Christmas</hw>, n and adj As Christmas falls in Australasia at Midsuland, and the word has therefore a different connotation

1852 Mrs Meredith, `My Ho in November, hot midsummer weather at Christmas, the bed of a river the driest walk, and corn harvest in February, were things strangely at variance with my Old-World notions”