LANCELET. 



725 



a representative of this West Indian species in the Louisiade Archipelago and subse- 

 quently in Sandal Bay, Lifu, although it is a fact that there is a strong Caribbean 

 element in the fauna of the Indo-Pacific. Still it is interesting in consideration of 

 the fact that two other species of the same family belonging to different genera, 

 Amphioanis belcheri and Epigonichthys cultellus, occur in Torres Strait and the Moluccan 

 Sea but have not been found in the West Indies. 





35SSSB3ESE 



Fig. 14. Asymmetron caudatum (probably a sub-species of A. lucayanum). A number of the oral cirri are 

 united together by an intertentacular membrane ; the notochord is continued as a urostyle behind the muscle- 

 segments. Magnified about 7 times. 



At the time of my visit, as I was informed by the resident Wesleyan missionary, 

 the Rev. Ambrose Fletcher, the population of Panaieti numbered 466 men, women, and 

 children, who live in a series of villages on the south side of the island facing the 

 lagoon. The island is rocky and the soil unproductive, so that food is often scarce. 

 The natives, however, are great sailors and canoe-builders and cover long distances by 

 means of their huge mat-sails. More than half the population may be absent from 

 the island during the south-west season, in search of food, pigs, yams and so forth. 

 The houses are well built and have a characteristic shape, somewhat resembling a huge 

 inverted whale-boat, often with a verandah-like platform in front. In every village 

 there was a small bar of wood supported upon a couple of uprights and bearing 

 numerous lower jaws of pigs to show what the natives had eaten, the skeletons 

 of former feasts which could be contemplated in times of stress. The uprights were 

 often surmounted by a cocoa-nut, reminding me that in New Britain the husks of 

 cocoa-nuts were wont to be displayed in a similar manner. It would appear that these 

 people exist largely upon the " bare imagination of a feast," and at this time of the 

 year (January) food was very scarce, bread-fruit and nuts called "siaia" being the chief 

 commodities, while hunger can always be staved off by chewing the areca nuts which 

 they obtain from Misima. The " siaia " nuts are roasted in the fire or cooked in 

 clay-pots and have an agreeable taste. Another species of nuts called "dausia" has 

 to be soaked for five days in sea-water either before or after being cooked, in order 

 to remove its noxious properties and render it edible. 



The piles upon which the houses of the Panaietians are raised, are fitted with 

 large circular wooden discs perforated in the centre to admit the post; they are called 

 " panapana " and are intended to prevent the incursions of rats into the dwellings. 



Tattooing is not practised at Panaieti, but the teeth of the women are blackened 

 and the ears pierced upon arriving at puberty. Should a young girl join the mission, 

 the old women of her village will urge her to leave the white man (" dimdim "), 



recorded from Singapore by the late Mr Bedford. The lancelet of the Bass Strait (Heteropleuron bassanum), 

 as I ascertained from specimens in the Australian Museum, Sydney, kindly shown to me by Mr Thomas 

 Whitelegge, ranges north as far as Port Jackson. 



95—2 



