NATURAL COLONISATION METHODS 297 



Whenever man takes a hand at assisting Nature in the 

 process of distribution of Hving forms, it is to be expected that 

 either his efforts will result in an inconspicuous failure or in 

 a conspicuous disaster. Here, the efforts have been mostly 

 failures. 



He has turned down deer — the sambar and the kidang — 

 and at one time quite a numerous herd was preserved with 

 every care. The advent of a British man-o'-war, and the 

 efforts of a regrettable shooting party, ended in driving to sea 

 all those that were not shot — and the fate of those that took 

 to the barrier was no better than that of those which were 

 slain on land, for sharks accounted for all that the crew failed 

 to secure. From Singapore others were reintroduced, but the 

 last of the kidang passed away during my stay on the atoll. 

 In the same island with the deer, a number of rabbits were 

 liberated, but they failed to attain to the wonderful standard 

 of fecundity of their race, and their colony is a very struggling 

 one to-day. 



Sheep have been imported, but sheep which, after a pro- 

 longed hunt, are shot with great difficulty, and then only yield 

 some twenty-eight pounds of tough mutton, are not reckoned 

 as a success, even by men who welcome anything that does not 

 come from tins. The only influence that the deer and the 

 sheep ever had in the atoll is that the former have created a 

 " browse limit " to the trees — a novel feature in a coral island 

 landscape; and that the latter have left an ever-growing 

 legacy of ticks — and the many mongrel dogs are their legatees. 

 It may be of some interest to the student of parasites to know 

 that these ticks, having lost their proper host, took so readily 

 to the dogs, and that when dogs are not at hand, they have no 

 respect for a far more dignified patron. It may also interest 

 him to know that there is an atoll distribution of parasites, 

 and that the dogs of one island have ticks, but are free from 

 fleas ; while the dogs of another island do not possess ticks, 

 but harbour fleas innumerable ; — but these things are among 

 the least pleasant members of the atoll fauna. 



Pigs thrive exceedingly upon coconuts, and — for pigs — 



