NODES ON] TAnITT 
959 
Photo by Harrison W. Smith 
CORAL GROWING ON THE REEF: PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE EARLY MORNING, BEFORE THE 
BREEZE HAS RUFFLED THE SURFACE OF THE WATER 
quantities to Europe. We were much 
interested in the different methods of 
gathering the nuts in various islands. In 
Tahiti the natives climb the trees with 
the help of a strip of green, fibrous bark 
torn off the stem of a hibiscus tree. 
After knotting the two ends together, the 
climber slips his feet half through the 
circle, and, standing with his legs apart, 
so as to stretch the thong tight, ascends 
the tree in a series of leaps, with a foot 
on each side of the trunk. A practiced 
climber will thus mount trees of a very 
considerable height with a celerity and 
ease which do not suggest the long prac- 
tice actually required. On making a trial 
myself, I found it difficult to climb even 
so much as a foot from the ground. 
In its fresh, green state the cocoanut 
provides a most refreshing drink, but as 
it grows older the “milk” hardens and 
forms the white kernel with which we 
are all familiar. ‘This kernel is the cele- 
brated copra and is commercially put to 
many different uses. In Tahiti it is used 
for sauces and for cocoanut oil. One 
sauce, which was served with fish at the 
above-mentioned picnic, although com- 
pounded of scraped nut and sea-water, 
was really quite palatable. 
At Tautira one of the sailors brought 
me the dried shell of a cocoanut, which 
he told me was full of lizards. I at once 
plugged the ‘“‘eye-holes’” and took the 
nutshell on board, where a careful ex- 
amination showed that it contained 136 
lizard eggs, 294 empty egg-shells, and 13 
newly hatched lizards. It would seem, 
therefore, that many females of this 
species repair to the same place to de- 
posit their eggs. The eggs themselves 
were found to be in all stages of incu- 
