THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 165 



THE PALOLO. 



[In connection with the note on the habits of this worm, as 

 noticed by Consul Churchward, which we published in our last 

 October issue, p. 76, we have received the following from the 

 Rev. Lorimer Fison, M.A., so well known for his ethnological 

 studies in the South Seas. — Ed.] 



The following is an extract from the Sydney Morning Herald 

 of 13th December, 1881 (own correspondent's letter): — "The 

 mbalolo also has put in its annual appearance after its own 

 queer fashion, and the natives have rejoiced in their yearly feast 

 upon it. This extraordinary seaworm comes to the surface but 

 once a year, and always at the same time. It appears in thickly 

 crowded masses, near the reef, in the early morning; and, as the 

 day grows hot, its swarms apparently melt away and disappear, to 

 be seen no more until the waning of the next November moon." 



The true explanation of this phenomenon was first discovered, 

 I believe, by the Rev. S. J. Whitmee, of the London Mission in 

 Samoa ; but his discovery does not appear to have attracted the 

 attention it deserves. The swarming of the mbalolo is the 

 coming together of the sexes, and this event is the termination 

 of mbalolo existence. When it takes place, both individuals 

 burst, dissolving as it were in a shower of spawn, and nothing is 

 left of them but little black specks, which the natives call their 

 " heads." The spawn, or ova, sink down into the crevices of 

 the coral reef, and nothing further is seen of them until they 

 come up, fully developed, in the following year to burst and 

 disappear in their turn. It might be possible to construct an 

 aquarium in which the ova could be preserved and their develop- 

 ment watched. 



In " Hazlewood's Fijian Dictionary " the following note 

 appears : — " Balolo (the B is mb), a kind of seaworm found only 

 on some reefs about the 25th November. It is much esteemed 

 by the natives when cooked. It gives the names to the months 

 ^d\o\o-lailai and '^■aXoXo-lexm (little a.ndg/eatj. From its appearing 

 so seldom, we have the proverb — " E kua gona ni balolo, me na 

 kua sara" — (" Now or never.") Literally — " If you don't (eat) 

 balolo (now), you won't eat it at all." 



Essendon, i8th February. 



NOTES ON AUSTRALIAN LOGANIACEAE. 

 By Baron von Mueller, K C.M.G., M. & Ph.D., F.R.S., &c. 



LOGANIA FLAVIFLORA. 



Almost herbaceous, never tall, imperfectly beset with very short 

 hairlets ; branchlets slightly furrowed ; leaves short, very narrow, 

 pointed, in distant pairs ; flowers solitary, rather large, almost 

 sessile ; segments of the calyx linear, acute ; corolla somewhat 

 or hardly longer than the calyx, bright-yellow glabrous or bearing 

 only extremely minute papillular hairlets ; anthers nearly sessile 



