162 BIRDS AND ANIMALS. [1839 



ons, yams, and tobacco, are more rare than other products, 

 but they thrive excellently well where they have been intro- 

 duced. 



(7.) Pigs and fowls are the only domesticated birds or 

 animals, except the sheep recently introduced, on which the 

 inhabitants rely for food ; and these are alone found upon 

 those islands to which the influence of the Tahitian mission- 

 aries has extended. Fish are plentiful in the lagoons, and 

 are principally caught in pens into which they are driven; 

 latterly, however, nets woven of cocoa-nut fibres have been 

 used for the purpose of taking them. Cetaceous animals of 

 all kinds abound in the vicinity of the islands. Aquatic 

 birds of almost every species are equally numerous, and some 

 of the uninhabited islets are perfect rookeries. Among the 

 sea-fowl, the frigate and the tropic bird, the gannet, and the 

 sooty tern, are the most important. 



Crabs and snakes — to the former of which the natives are 

 especially partial — exist in great numbers. The pearl oyster 

 is tolerably abundant in the lagoons, and the fishery promises 

 at no distant day to be quite valuable. Quantities of biche 

 de mer, or the sea-slug, are also obtained on the rocks; and 

 this may, in like manner, ultimately prove an important arti- 

 cle of commerce. 



(8.) It is difficult to form any precise estimate of the pop- 

 ulation of the Paumotu Group. It can scarcely exceed ten 

 thousand, and very likely may not be over eight. Full one 

 half of this number live on the island of Anaa ; one fourth 

 on Gambier Island; and the remainder are scattered aboui 

 among the different islands, — some containing from one to 

 five hundred, and others not exceeding twenty or thirty in- 

 habitants. 



Since the first discovery of these islands, and since the 

 establishment of the missionaries at Tahiti, the character of the 

 population, particularly on those members of the group W 

 of 144° W. longitude, has changed materially for the better. 

 The inhabitants of the easternmost islands are now, or were 

 recently, cannibals ; but on the western islands, there are 



