84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Collecting sea-cucumbers is easy, but preserving them is not. Rough 

 handling of any sort and above all the plunge into the preserving fluid 

 inevitably caused the cucumbers to eject from the mouth opening a con- 

 siderable portion of their insides, comprising most of the esophagus, 

 stomach and intestines. This extraordinary behavior tended both to 

 ruin the specimens and to make a rather messy lot of preserved ma- 

 terial. Occasionally not only cucumber stomach would come out, but 

 also an active and astonished little live fish. This fish, called Fierasfer, 

 seems to have adopted for more or less permanent home the inside of 

 sea-cucumbers. It is a slender, active, bright-eyed little creature which 

 has certainly displayed an extraordinary cleverness in the life-and- 

 death game of hide and seek with its enemies. 



Octopuses and squids came to be familiar acquaintances in the reef 

 pools. None of these were large, the pulpy, sack-like body of the larg- 

 est octopus found being perhaps not more than a foot long, with arms of 

 twice that length, but with its staring eyes and hooked beak and sucker- 

 armed tentacles even a small octopus looks very ferocious and capable of 

 making serious trouble. The squids with their power of ejecting a dark 

 fluid, discoloring all the water in the pool so that nothing could be seen 

 in it, had the further protection of concealment. We scientific collect- 

 ors were hard pressed in our search for octopuses by the food-hunting 

 natives. These devil-fish are much sought for by natives and are re- 

 puted to taste, when cooked, much like chicken. The most effective way 

 of rendering the octopus harmless and helpless in its collector's hands is 

 that of turning it inside out, which is a means regularly practised by 

 the natives. It seems to require, however, a particular knack which we 

 never learned. 



There were, of course, hosts of crabs, little crabs, middle-sized crabs 

 and big crabs; red and green and polka-dotted. Eather frightening at 

 first were the active, foot-long Squillas with sharp knife-blade claws. 

 Even more terrifying was a specimen (brought to us by a native) of 

 the great cocoanut crab, Birgus. These tough customers have a body 

 seven or eight inches across, and great long strong legs extending a foot 

 on either side. Their shell was of the hardest and their grasping claws 

 of the strongest. They spend most of their time in the cocoanut plan- 

 tations, feeding upon the fallen nuts. Just how they get at the tender 

 meat inside the cocoanut shell is more or less a question. The natives 

 tell you that the great crab climbs a cocoanut tree, snips off a cocoanut, 

 thus letting it fall heavily three or four score of feet to the ground. It 

 perchance falls on a stone, but even if not it is likely to be broken, any- 

 way. The crab, descending, then tears open the cracked shell and 

 scoops out the rich food. Perhaps this extraordinary crab does this 

 thing. We never saw it. But that it feeds upon cocoanuts is quite cer- 



