82 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 
used for this purpose in the islands of the Pacific. The fruit is 
pounded into a paste, inclosed in a bag, and kept over night. The 
time of an especially low tide is selected, and bags of the pounded 
fruit are taken out on the reef the next morning and sunk in certain 
deep holes in the reef. The fish soon appear at the surface, some of 
them lifeless, others attempting to swim, or faintly struggling with 
their ventral side uppermost. The natives scoop them up in nets, 
spear them, or jump overboard and catch them in their hands, some- 
times even diving for them. Nothing more striking could be imagined 
than the picture presented by the conglomeration of strange shapes 
and bright colors—snake-like sea eels (Ophicthus, Muraena, and 
Kechidna); voracious lizard-fishes (Synodus); gar-like hound-tishes 
(Tylosurus), with their jaws prolonged into a sharp beak: half-beaks 
(Hemiramphus), with the lower jaw projecting like an awl and the - 
upper one haying the appeerance of being broken off; long-snouted 
trumpet-fishes (Fistularia): founders (/%atephirys pavo): porcupine-fish 
(Diodon hystr/r), bristling with spines; mulletsof several kinds (Mugil), 
highly esteemed as food-fishes; pike-like Sphyraenas; squirret fishes 
(Holocentrus) of the brightest and most beautiful colors—searlet, rose- 
colorand silver, and yellow and blue: surmullets (Cpenens and Psend- 
upencus) Of Various shades of yellow, marked with bluish lines from the 
eye to the snout; parrot-fishes (Scarus), with large scales, parrot-like 
beaks, and intense colors, some of them a deep e¢reenish blue, others 
looking as though painted with blue and pink opaque colors; variega- 
ted Chaetodons, called ‘sea butterflies” by the natives; black-and- 
yellow banded banner-fish (Aane/is canescens); trunktishes (Ostriveion), 
with horns and armor; gaily striped lancet fish (Zeuth/s (/neatus) 
culled Aryug; leopard-spotted groupers (Ap/nephelus heraqonatus), 
like the cv4r///as of the Peruvian coast: cardinal-tishes (A pogon fuscia- 
fusx) striped from head to tail with bands of black and flesh color; 
hideous-looking, warty toadtishes, ‘Sifv,” armed with poisonous 
spines, much dreaded by the natives; anda black fish (Monoceros mar- 
ginatus), with a spur on its forehead. 
As many young fish unfit for food are destroyed by this process, 
the Spanish Government forbade this method of fishing; but since the 
American occupation of the island the practice has been revived. 
In the mangrove swamps when the tide is low hundreds of little 
fishes with protruding eyes may be seen hopping about in the mud and 
climbing among the roots of the Rhizophora and Bruguiera. These 
are the widely spread Lerfophthalmus koerenter’, velonging to a 
group of fishes interesting from the fact that their air-bladder has 
assumed ina measure the function of lungs, enabling the animal to 
breathe atmospheric air. 
Following I give a list of some of the Guam fishes arranged accord- 
ing to their vernacular names: 
