THE CONQUERING TREE 203 



ocean, which leads to the alteration and amendment of the 

 surface of the globe. Here, may be watched the very growth 

 of land — land creeping silently, irresistibly upon the sea, 

 yet with a movement which may be calculated and registered 

 with exactitude. Having fulfilled its purpose, the man- 

 grove suffers the fate of the primitive and aboriginal. 

 Tyrannous trees of over-topping growth, which at first 

 hesitatingly accepted its hospitality, crowd and shove, com- 

 pelling the hardy and courageous plant to further efforts to 

 win dominion from the ocean. So the pioneer advances, 

 ever reclaiming extended areas as the usurping jungle 

 presses on its rear. 



Nor must it be imagined that mangrove swamps are 

 unproductive. Fish traverse the intricacies of the arching 

 roots, edible crabs burrow holes in the mud, and in them 

 await your coming, and more often than not baffle your 

 ingenuity to extricate them. Among other stalked-eyed 

 crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly 

 large, and which scuttles among the roots, making 

 a defiant clicking noise — the fiddle or soldier crab 

 {Gelasimus vocans). Oysters seal themselves to the roots, 

 and various sorts of shell-fish gather together — two 

 or three varieties appear to browse upon the leaves 

 and bark of the mangroves ; some excavate galleries in 

 the living trunks. The insidious cobra does not wear 

 any calcareous covering beyond the frail tiny bivalves 

 which guard the head — a scandalously small proportion of 

 its naked length — but lines its tunnels with the materials 

 whence shell is made, smooth and white as porcelain. 

 How this delicate creature with less of substance than an 

 oyster — a mere worm of semi-transparent, stiff slime — bores 

 in hard wood along and across the grain, housing itself as 

 it proceeds, and never by any chance breaking in upon its 

 neighbours, though the whole of the trunk of the tree 

 be honeycombed, savours of another wonder. Authorities 

 consider the bivalve shell too delicate and frail to be 

 employed in the capacity of a drill, and one investigator 

 has come to the conclusion that the rough fleshy parts of 



