262 THE PLANT WORLD 



settled there. The woman said she had looked forward to coming to 

 Guam ever since it had become a possession of the United States. Her 

 husband had told her so much about it that she thought it must be a 

 paradise. She met with a warm welcome at the hands of his relations ; 

 but she said, " I am afraid we will have to go back to Honolulu. My 

 husband has a good ranch in the northern part of this island, but there 

 is no water there. I sometimes go to the ranch with him, but we can 

 take with us only enough water to drink, and I can not bathe my little 

 ones. In Honolulu we had two or three water-cocks in the house, and 

 I could fill the bath-tub whenever I wished. Here we are cautioned 

 against drinking the water in the wells on account of the prevailing fever, 

 and yet there are no public water- works. When it rains we can fill our 

 water-jars, but when the supply gives out we have to depend upon the 

 well or the river ; and the river water can not be good, for I have seen the 

 men bathing their buffaloes in it, and the women are always washing 

 their clothes there. Now one of my little ones is sick, and the doctor 

 says I must feed the child on milk, but I have no cow. In Honolulu 

 the milk cart passes the door several times a day; but here many of the 

 people who have cows don't milk them, and those who do promise their 

 milk beforehand. Now our house is blown down, and my husband 

 hasn't been able to earn a cent since our arrival. Everything is expen- 

 sive, and it is hard to get beef or even chickens, and I don't know what 

 we shall do. I wish we were back in Honolulu ! " 



I have received a number of letters from people wishing to settle on 

 this island, among others a dentist, who saw in one of my published letters 

 that we had no dentist on the island. I can not encourage his coming ; 

 for, though the town has a population of more than six thousand, few of 

 the people would be willing or able to pay for having their teeth attended 

 to, and the prices of food staples, such as rice, flour, and tinned meats 

 and vegetables, are high. 



I now have for a guest Mr. Alvin Scale, who came here from Honolulu, 

 bringing a letter of introduction to me from Professor William T. Brigham, 

 Director of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology 

 and Natural History. Mr. Scale arrived here on an Army transport last 

 Wednesday. He is collecting material for the Bishop Museum, devoting 

 special attention to birds and fishes. I have shown him how to press 

 and dry plants, and will have my boys assist him as much as possible. 

 I have agreed to let him have a number of tanks filled with alcohol, 

 brought here on the Yosemite, for his fishes. He is an excellent shot and 

 is a zealous collector. To-day I gave him a list of the birds thus far known 

 to occur on this island. This list was compiled principally from those of 

 Quoy and Gaimard, zoologists of the Freycinet Expedition ; Oustalet, 

 who described a collection made by M. Alfred Marche in 1887-89, in the 



