6 NATURAL SCIENCE [July 
distributed by Mr Rainbow into 25 species, of which 15 are 
new. Fifteen! At any rate Hpeira ventricosa, and probably some 
of the other species of Hpeira described as new, appear to be nothing 
but representatives of that wide-spread, highly variable, and well- 
known species Epeira theis ; 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 “ Buthus 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 ECHINODERMS OF FUNAFUTI 
THESE animals have fallen into the more experienced hands of 
Mr T. Whitelegge. 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. Rolling over a slab of 
dead coral rock anywhere between tide marks, exposed the haunt of 
a little community of Petrolisthes dentata and Leiolophus planissimus. 
Intercepted in their efforts to escape, these would flatten themselves 
down 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 Salarius, were usually 
