388 A MISSION TO VITI. 
in some parts, as has already been related; and equally 
irritating are the flies (Lago), which keep one’s hands 
constantly employed, and in order to have a meal in 
peace a boy must be kept continually employed in driving 
them away. Fleas, to finish the catalogue of irritants, are 
not so plentiful as I have found them in Spanish America 
or Southern Europe, nor are foreigners much troubled 
by the vermin so abundant in the large heads of hair 
worn by the heathen natives. Cockroaches are swarm- 
ing in most houses, canoes, and vessels, and often dis- 
turb one during the night, not only by running over 
one’s body but also by attacking it in right earnest. 
Some very fine beetles and butterflies are met with; and 
at dusk the woods begin to swarm with myriads of fire- 
flies. Highly curious are what are popularly termed 
leaf- and stick-insects, species of Mantis; the wings of 
some of them can scarcely be distinguished from real 
leaves. Some large kinds of spider, amongst them a 
stinging one, have to be noticed. Centipedes, nearly a 
foot long, were frequently encountered by us in the woods, 
and scorpions are more frequent than one could wish. 
There is a goodly display of the lower evertebrate 
animals, amongst them a long series of sea-slugs, sea- 
cumbers, and béche-de-mer, annelidans, starfish, and me- 
dusas. 
It would well repay a zoologist who has some funds 
at his command—without them he must not go to this 
expensive place—to spend a couple of years in investi- 
gating the Fauna of Fiji. Judging from what has been 
collected, mostly in great haste, a number of new 
genera and species may be expected from a thorough 
zoological examination of the group. 
