144 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



Ah ! What a large piece of bamboo ! It must have been 

 washed on the shore from some far-away land ; for, of course, 

 there are no bamboos growing here. What a lot of water-buckets 

 could be made out of it just by sawing it across under the joints ! 

 Its length must be from 12 ft. to 15 ft., and its diameter must be 

 from I ft. to 18 inches, and nearly the same diameter all its 

 length. It must, indeed, have been a tall stem when growing. 



I walk down to the water's edge, and find among the broken 

 and rubbed pieces of coral a large quantity of pumice stone. 

 There must be tons of it lying on this beach. Surely it would 

 pay to collect it and take it to England ; for it is evidently just 

 the kind of pumice that is used by painters, &c. While coming 

 along in the ship, we saw great collections of it on the surface of 

 the sea, blown by the wind into wreaths and carried along by the 

 current. These wreaths I saw for about ten degrees on each side 

 of the equator. The vast quantities of this stone floating on the 

 sea, over twenty degrees of latitude, and lying so plentifully on 

 the Islands of the Indian Ocean, show what a tremendous 

 volcanic eruption there must have been a year ago at Krakatoa. 

 For it is to that spot that the pumice is traceable. I pick up a 

 piece or two, and continue my walk along the beach. 



I find a number of shells of various kinds. As I go up from 

 the beach towards the bushes I am surprised to see more than a 

 hundred shells of the same kind moving about under the bushes 

 with a somewhat rapid, hobbling motion. I walk forward, and 

 the shells stop and seem to fall flat on the ground. When I stand 

 still for a little, they gradually rise and recommence their gro- 

 tesque movement. I pick one up, and find it inhabited by a 

 hermit crab. Some are large and strong, with one of their claws 

 of a rather formidable size. I select three or four small ones, and 

 wrap them up in newspaper. These I took on board the ship, and 

 supplied with food of various kinds. I brought them to Victoria, 

 and kept them several months in my house in Kew. My children 

 used to amuse themselves by setting the creatures to run along 

 the verandah in the sun. The warmer the day the more quickly 

 they ran ; until, as the weather grew colder, they moved with less 

 and less alacrity, and at last, one after the other, they died. 



On returning through the cocoanut grove I came across a dis- 

 mantled mia-mia, or something of the sort, with remains of cocoa- 

 nut husks, leaves, &c. This, I suppose, was one of the camps of 

 the Malagasy labourers who are employed by the French on the 

 island to collect the cocoanuts and to make copra. I believe 

 they used to make a large quantity of cocoanut oil here, besides 

 catching and preserving fish. Some of these Malagasies came on 

 board the ship and brought for sale shells and other curios, 

 including some most lovely delicate pieces of coral, which they 

 had got from the reefs under the sea, and the forms and colouis 



