CHAPTER XXVI 



SHIP-BORNE AND WIND-BORNE COLONISTS 



The creatures tliat have come in ships, as hangers-on to 

 human enterprise, are perhaps the largest contribution to 

 the islands' colonists ; — they are certainly by far the most 

 economically important. 



It is not right, always, to regard these creatures as 

 passengers ; for as a rule they are residents on the ship, and 

 they came ashore, maybe, quite against their will. It is not 

 that a cockroach joins a ship in Singapore, and steps ashore 

 in the atoll ; for the ship is his home, and he was born there, 

 and probably he only left his home by being passed ashore in 

 a packing-case. When a ship has traded for long in Far 

 Eastern waters she has a very considerable fauna of her own, 

 a fauna almost as rich as that of a coral island itself; and, in 

 the case of some ships, it is a question as to which would gain 

 by the exchange, if she were moored alongside a coral island 

 for any length of time. Rats and mice ; cockroaches, of 

 perhaps two or three species ; ants in varied armies ; a scorpion 

 or two ; some centipedes, and a host of spiders are the dwellers 

 on practically every ship that floats in Far Eastern waters. 

 Even there is such a thing as distribution on a ship, and in 

 the ship that I came to know best, the cockroaches and the 

 ants had very fairly defined areas of distribution, beyond which 

 they did not greatly transgress. Some creatures, which are 

 not permanent residents upon the ship, make their passage in 

 different forms of merchandise : many beetles, some moths, 

 and a variety of crickets are passengers of this class ; — there 

 is one species of cricket that appears to be the invariable 

 accompanier of every straw-stuffed soda-water crate that lands. 



By far the most important items in the atoll fauna are 



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