82 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 



used For Miis ])urposo in the islands of the Pacific. The fruit is 

 pounded into a paste, inclosed in a bag, and kept over night. The 

 time of an especially low tide is selected, and bags of the pounded 

 fruit are taken out on the reef the next nioniing and sunk in certain 

 deep holes in the reef. The fish soon appear at the surface, some of 

 them lifeless, others att(Miipting to swim, or faintly struggling with 

 their ventral side uppermost. The natives scoop them up in nets, 

 spear them, or jump overboard and catch them in their hands, some- 

 times even diving for them. Nothing more striking could be imagined 

 than the picture presented by the conglomeration of strange shapes 

 and bright colors— snake-like sea eels (Ophicthus, Muraena, and 

 P^chidna); voracious lizard-fishes (Synodus); gar-like hound-fishes 

 (Tylosurus). with their jaws prolonged into a sharp ])eak; half-beaks 

 (Hemiramphus), with the lower jaw projecting like an awl and the 

 U[)per one having the appearance of being broken ott'; long-snouted 

 trumpet-fishes (Fistularia); HoundiM's {PI(it(>j>hri/-^jHw<>)\ porcupine-fish 

 {Dlodon hystrh)^ bristling with spines; uudletsof se\'eral kinds (Mugil), 

 highly esteemed as food-fishes; pike-like Sphyraenas; squirrel fishes 

 (Holocentrus)of the brightest and most beautiful colors— scarlet, rose- 

 color and silver, and yellow and blue; surnudlets ( Upeneus and Pseud- 

 upeneus) of various shades of yellow, marked with ))Iuish lines from the 

 eye to the snout; parrot-fishes (Scarus), with large scales, parrot-like 

 beaks, and intense colors, some of them a deep greenish blue, others 

 looking as though painted with l)lue and pink opaque colors; variega- 

 ted Chaetodons, called ''sea butterflies'' by the natives; black-and- 

 yellow banded ))anner-tish (Zanc/xs canescen,^; trunkfishes {(htraeUm), 

 with horns and armor; gaily striped lancet fish {Teiithls Ihieatm) 

 called hhjug; leopard-spotted groupers {Jtj)lnep/ielns hexagon at us), 

 like the cahr'dlm of the Peruvian coast; cardinal-fishes {Apogou fascia- 

 t>fs) striped from head to tail with bands of black and flesh color; 

 hideous-looking, warty toadfishes, '^riufn,'^ armed with poisonous 

 spines, nmch dreaded by the natives; and a black fish {Mo7ioceros mar- 

 gmatiis), Avith a spur on its forehead. 



As many young fish unfit for food are destroyed by this process, 

 the Spanish Government forbade this method of fishinp-; but since the 

 American occupation of the island the practice has been revived. 



In the mangrove swamps when the tide is low hundreds of little 

 fishes with protruding eyes may be seen hopping about in the mud and 

 climbing among the roots of the Rhizophora and Bruguiera. These 

 are the widely spread Perlophthahnm koelre uteri, belonging to a 

 group of fishes interesting from the fact that their air-bladder has 

 assumed in a measure the function of luno-s, enabling- the animal to 

 l)reathe atmospheric air. 



Following I give a list of some of the Guam fishes arranged accord- 

 ing to their vernacular names: 



