288 CORAL AND ATOLLS 



can yield a collection that is at all representative. A casual 

 visitor, whose stay is limited to a few weeks, cannot hope to 

 meet with the entire insect fauna, and nothing but protracted 

 collecting can give results upon which it is possible to fairly 

 estimate the fauna of even the smallest coral island. 



I do not think that the increased number of creatures 

 recorded here indicates an actual increase in the fauna of the 

 place, but only represents a more thorough and prolonged 

 collecting. The Governor is of the opinion that additions 

 have not been made to the fauna within recent years ; and 

 those species to be seen to-day have been for long in the 

 islands. Still, changes are increasingly liable to occur as time 

 goes on, and it is very much to be hoped that this census- 

 taking of the fauna will be repeated from time to time. 



It is obvious that there are only two routes for emigrants 

 to such a place as Cocos-Keeling ; a creature must either 

 come by water, or by flying through the air ; and the entire 

 population may be separated into water-borne and wind- borne 

 waifs. The water-borne division comprises two very different 

 sets of colonists : the one party of those who made the voyage 

 by chance, and with much hardihood, at the mercy of the sea- 

 drifts; and the other whose members came as passengers in 

 ships, in company with that greatest distributor of animal types 

 — the merchant sailorman. The first party is the most worthy 

 of study. In order to reconstruct a history of the methods of 

 their transit, some idea must be formed of the ocean flotsam 

 at their disposal, and of the oceanic drifts which carry the 

 flotsam. No better method can be followed than the exami- 

 nation of the wave-cast material of the seaward beaches ; and 

 a daily tour of a stretch of barrier reef, for a period of several 

 months, will lead to the discovery of many potential pas- 

 senger vessels. The trunks of trees are naturally the most 

 abundant of all the flotsam that might serve for the colonist, 

 and it must be remembered that a single tree-trunk may 

 be the only remnant of what was once a real floating island. 

 The very name " floating island " creates the suspicion of 

 romance, and yet floating islands are realities. Many of 



