6 NATURAL SCIENCE [July 



distributed by Mr Eainbow into 25 species, of which 15 are 

 new. Fifteen ! At any rate Epcira ventricosa, and probably some 

 of the other species of Epeira described as new, appear to be nothing 

 but representatives of that wide-spread, highly variable, and well- 

 known species Epeira thc'is ; while Hyllus ferox and H. audax, sup- 

 posed new species, have been placed in a wrong genus, and are 

 probably old friends. 



The scorpion described as " Btdhus brevicaudatus sp. n. " belongs 

 to a totally different family from Buthus; it is perhaps the best 

 known of all scorpions, and more than a century ago Fabricius 

 named it Hormurus australasiae. 



Fortunately for Mr Rainbow and for us, he does recognise 

 that some of the species found on Funafuti are neither new nor 

 peculiar to that island, but that they have been introduced by man. 

 Among these are certain mosquitoes, which the natives catch with a 

 kind of racquet, the meshes of which are made of the glutinous 

 snares of orb-weaving spiders. White ants, Calotermes margini- 

 pennis, attack the coco-palms at a height of three to six feet above 

 the ground, tunnelling their way through ; as a result the trees are 

 snapped off by the gales. It is probable that both the tree and the 

 termite were introduced by human agency, via Hawaii, about two 

 centuries ago. 



The Crustaceans and Echinodeems of Funafuti 



These animals have fallen into the more experienced hands of 

 Mr T. Whitele^e. The Crustacea are the lords of the atoll, swarm- 

 ing into all vacant places. " The Coenobita," says Mr Hedley, 

 " wander across from shore to shore, and dispute any stray edibles 

 with the rats. Some crabs even take up their residence in the tree 

 tops of Pandanus, while, as everybody knows, Birgus is as much at 

 home on a palm bole as a squirrel on an oak. . . . Human habita- 

 tions are not even secure from crabs. . . . Active as they are during 

 the day, it is at night that the land crabs hold high carnival. On 

 the beaches the Crustacea were everywhere abundant, particular 

 species possessing each their special zone. About high tide mark 

 on the windward shore promenaded Grapsus maculatus, a crowd of 

 which scattered before the footsteps of a visitor, and sought refuge 

 under loose coral blocks or in deep pools. Eolling over a slab of 

 dead coral rock anywhere between tide marks, exposed the haunt of 

 a little community of Pctrolisthes dcntata and Lcioloplms planissimus. 

 Intercepted in their efforts to escape, these would flatten themselves 

 clown to the surface of the stone so closely that the collector's 

 fingers with difficulty grasped them. The deeper rock-pools at the 

 border of the reef-flat, the chief home of Salarms, were usually 



