nettle should be gathered quite young, when the leaves are perfectly tender.  The plant should be pulled up whole, with a portion of the root.  In order to preserve your hands from the sharp biting liquid which issues from the points, you should wrap them in linen of close texture.  When once the nettle is boiled, it is perfectly innocuous; and this vegetable, so rough in its exterior, becomes a very delicate dish.  We were able to enjoy this delightful variety of esculents for more than a month.  Then the little tubercles of the fern became hollow and horny, and the stems themselves grew as hard as wood while the nettle, armed with a long white beard, p 203 presented only a menacing and awful aspect.”  The roots of many kinds of ferns, perhaps of all of them, are edible.  Our poor in England will eat neither fern nor nettle:  they say the first is innutritious, and the second acrid.  I like them both.

Seaweed.—­Several kinds of seaweed, such as Laver and Irish moss, are eatable.

Cooking Utensils.—­Cookery books.—­A book on cooking is of no use at all in the rougher kinds of travel, for all its recipes consist of phrases such as “Take a pound of so-and-so, half a pound of something else, a pinch of this, and a handful of that.”  Now in the bush a man has probably none of these things—­he certainly has not all of them—­and, therefore, the recipe is worthless.

Pots and Kettles.—­Cooking apparatus of any degree of complexity, and of very portable shapes, can be bought at all military outfitters’; but for the bush, and travelling roughly, nothing is better than a light roomy iron pot and a large strong tin kettle.  It is disagreeable to make tea in the same pot that meat is boiled in; besides, if you have only one vessel, it takes a longer time to prepare meals.  If possible, take a second small tin kettle, both as a reserve against accidents and for the convenience of the thing.  An iron pot, whose lid is the size of the crown of a hat, cooks amply enough for three persons at a time, and can, without much inconvenience, be made to do double duty; and, therefore, the above articles would do for six men.  An iron pot should have very short legs, or some blow will break one of them off and leave a hole.  Iron kettles far outwear tin ones, but the comparative difficulty of making them boil, and their great weight, are very objectionable.  A good tin kettle, carefully cherished (and it is the interest of the whole party to watch over its safety), lasts many months in the bush.  Copper is dangerous; but the recipe is given, further on, for tinning copper vessels when they require it.  Have the handle of the kettle notched or bored near the place where it joins the body of the kettle, so as to give a holding by which the lid may be tied tightly down; then, if you stuff a wisp of grass into the spout, the kettle will carry water for a journey.

Damaged Pots.—­A pot or kettle with a large hole in its bottom, filled up with a piece of wood, has been made to boil water by burying it a little way in the earth and making the fire round it.  A hole in the side of a pot can be botched up with clay or wood, so as not to leave it altogether useless.