732 EGG-LAYING OF NAUTILUS. 



deposit their larvae in the water. Their migration takes place about the time of the 

 fructification of the ferns, when also the yams which have been planted for the ensuing 

 season begin to shoot up. At this time they, as well as Birgus, are taken on the 

 shore by torchlight in hundreds, and are cooked and eaten. 



Another bait which may be used when others fail consists of crushed sea-urchins, 

 especially the Heterocentrotus (Acrocladia) mammillatus, which abounds on the reef-patches 

 and is also eaten by the natives. The best bait is made by cooking the large prawns or 

 langoustes, Palinwrus (also Scyllarus), which especially frequent the weather side of the 

 island. When ready they are pounded to a pulp and then wrapped up in the dead 

 fibrous spathes of the cocoa-nut tree, and placed in the basket, to which they impart 

 an irresistible bouquet. 



Having observed that the newly captured Nautili adhered with great force by means 

 of their tentacles to the sides of the vessels in which they were placed, I fixed some 

 boxes in the cages. They attached themselves to the boxes but made no other use of 

 them, and one day a huge conger eel effected an entrance into the trap and brought 

 serious dissension into the household. To avoid a recurrence of such a disaster we 

 closed up the entrance with sacking. On the next morning there was a curious white 

 object, looking at first sight like some part of the axial skeleton of a bony fish, adhering 

 to the sacking. Upon removing it we found that it had been tightly fixed to the sacking, 

 and very soon I realised that it was the first egg of Nautilus which rewarded my gaze. 

 After two years of anxious groping in the dark it may be imagined what a thrill passed 

 through my marrow, destined to be quenched when I found during the course of the 

 following weeks that all the eggs which I attempted to rear were infertile. 



I kept my culture cages at a depth of about three fathoms and fed the company of 

 Nautili three times a week, going out on Saono's raft for the purpose. 



The Lifuan rafts are well-constructed and seaworthy (see Fig. 5, p. 699). They are 

 worked by sculling with a long, flattened pole, which passes through a hole in the centre- 

 board at the front of the raft, and are sufficiently wide and buoyant to bear the weight 

 of two men and a large fish-trap between them. Provided that equilibrium is maintained, 

 a rather difficult matter in a choppy sea, the worst accident to be feared is the snapping 

 of the pole. The position of the fish-traps, which are sunk to depths varying from three 

 to eighteen fathoms, is ascertained by dead reckoning, buoys not being employed. They 

 are dimly seen at sixteen to eighteen fathoms on a calm day, and when it is desired 

 to raise them they are skilfully secured by means of a wooden hook, which is lowered 

 from the raft and passed through the meshes. In the " thingit " (the native name for 

 the fish-traps) in which I kept a stock of Nautilus I had a door made, through which 

 I was able to get bodily into the cage on board the raft and manipulate at leisure. 

 I had several of these incubators and tried all methods, pairing off the Nautili in some, 

 associating them in companies in others, manufacturing dark recesses in sackcloth, all 

 to no purpose. The eggs were all infertile and often simply consisted of the empty 

 capsules without any vitellus inside. Generally, however, the eggs contained a healthy 

 sherry-coloured vitellus, which either suffered no change when left for a fortnight or 

 commenced to addle. It was on December 5, 1896, nearly four months after my arrival 

 in Lifu, that I obtained my first egg and, according to promise, presented Saono with 



