64 Naturalist at Large 



we wanted. I had a sack of Haitian five-cent pieces on 

 board the yacht. We found that we got much better re- 

 sults from our collectors if we ourselves did not stay where 

 they could watch us. It was so much more fun to stand 

 and stare at strangers than it was to do anything else that 

 the temptation was quite overwhelming. But if we went 

 ashore in the morning and spread the news of what we 

 were prepared to do, then disappeared on board and 

 hauled up the gangway, by the middle of the afternoon 

 we could go ashore and be overwhelmed by a rabble of 

 men and women, boys and girls, with snakes and lizards 

 dangling at the ends of dozens of little lassoes which they 

 fashioned cunningly from shredded palm leaves. 



On one occasion a poor old man came up to us with a 

 gourd full of fat white grubs. These he had dug out of a 

 rotten palm trunk. I recognized them at once as the larvae 

 of a big weevil which lives in decayed palm wood. Of 

 course he brought them feeling sure we would buy so 

 succulent a dainty, for the Haitians are extremely fond 

 of these grubs fried. Rosamond was utterly disgusted by 

 their very appearance and I was not allowed to take them 

 on board and eat them, which I should have greatly en- 

 joyed doing. I have no right to complain, however, for 

 the family did not relish the intimacy with a wide variety 

 of reptiles which they patiently endured. 



