214 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



scholaris), taken possession of by a colony of metallic 

 starlings, whose hundreds of brown nests hang in clusters 

 from the topmost branches. By the perpetual shrieks and 

 calls of these most lively of birds a straight course may be 

 steered through the gloomy jungle to the tree, and thence 

 to the beach, as a ship gains her haven through a fog 

 by the sound of unseen warning horns and bell-surmounted 

 rocks. On the trunk of this great tree may still be seen 

 the marks of stone tomahawks of the primitive inhabitants 

 of the island. There is none now to disturb and plunder 

 the hasty birds. 



Stealthy Murderers 



The fig-tree which aids the Baea in its object of beauti- 

 fying the precipice is one of a very numerously represented 

 species, which assumes great variety of form, and produces 

 fruit of varying quality. This particular variety {Ficus 

 cunninghamit) begins life as a parasite. A thin slender shoot, 

 tremulously weak, leans lightly on the base of some tall 

 tree, and finding agreeable conditions, clings and grows. 

 A harmless, tender, thong-like shoot it is — a helpless 

 plant, that could not stand alone or exist but for the 

 hospitality of another of strength and substance. Soon a 

 second shoot, slight and frail, emerges near the root, but 

 at a different angle from its aspiring brother, and others as 

 delicate as the first follow, until the trunk of the host is 

 sprawled over by naked running shoots, grey-green in 

 colour, crafty and insidious. As they increase in age the 

 shoots flatten on the under surface and cross and recross. 

 Wheresoever they touch they coalesce. The trunk becomes 

 enveloped in living lace — in a network, rather, living, ever 

 growing and irregular — the meshes of which gradually 

 decrease in dimension. All the while squeezing and 

 causing decay, the meshes close up. The trunk of the 

 host is completely enclosed ; it is the dying core of a living 

 cylinder, for the first shoots have long since crept up 



