124 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
grew luxuriantly and attracted a more varied and abundant in- 
sect fauna. 
On our journeys about Vitilevu our collecting efforts excited 
little curiosity or comment among the natives; apparently they 
either did not notice us or if they were interested their interest 
was not made known. Never were we followed about in the field 
and at no time did any one thrust his efforts upon us unsolicited, 
as so often happened among the West Indian negroes. 
The little coral islands of Makuluva and Nukulau some twelve 
miles northeast of Suva proved to be good collecting grounds. On 
both these islands are Government quarantine stations which were 
under the immediate supervision of a care-taker in the person of 
a ‘“‘hard-boiled’’ Australian, Mr. J. W. Sadler, who lived on Nuku- 
lau with a black woman, a parrot, three dogs and a multitude of 
chickens, ducks and flying foxes. We spent five days on Makuluva 
in collecting birds, insects and marine invertebrates. Nukulau is 
densely wooded and the ‘‘Sone,’’ a creeping vine grows every- 
where. Another vine which clings to the trunks and limbs of the 
trees is the ‘‘Dire Samu.’’ It bears poisonous red and black seeds 
something like the ‘‘erab-eyes’’ of Florida and the West Indies. 
I found mosquitoes on this little island more abundant and trouble- 
some than at any other place in Fiji. 
One of the most interesting of the collecting trips which Mrs. 
Stoner and I made in Fiji included a visit to the native village of 
Viria some twenty miles up the Rewa river and about thirty-five 
miles from Suva. In company with Mr. and Mrs. Ashbel Welch 
of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Lui, a native ‘‘boy’’ from the 
steamship company’s office to act as interpreter, we left our lodg- 
ing in Suva at noon of June 14. We traveled by motor car over 
ten of the comparatively few miles of surfaced road on the island 
to Dabui Levu, crossed the Rewa river by means of a cable ferry 
and arrived at Nausori a little later. The hilly and winding road, 
lined everywhere with the ever-present mimosa and lantana, had 
taken us over a very rough but beautiful part of the island. We 
passed in turn small cleared areas, dense bush with magnificent 
tree ferns, now and again a native house or small village with its 
adjacent taro patches, and a large tapioca plantation. Occasion- 
ally we met a blas¢ Fijian or a garrulous Hindu who passed the 
usual greeting, ‘‘Salaam, sahib.’’ 
At Nausori, after a brief wait which time I occupied by collect- 
ing water-striders in a small creek near by, we boarded the de- 
