CHAPTER VIII. 
Absence of Wild Animals upon Coral Islands. Pleasures af the Chase 
Unknown. Diet of the Aborigines. How Alligators Taste. The Guanas as 
a Table Luxury. They are Intoxicated with Whistling Music. Vassar Girls 
Charming Turtles. Mountain Crabs. The Hermit Crab a Freebooter. The 
Lizards—Changing their Color and Hunting Game. Animals upon the West 
India Islands when Discovered. Snakes. Sea Turtles. Turtle Shell. How 
Sponges Grow and form Communistic Communities. The Sponge Fisheries. 
Value and Quantity of Bahama Sponges Exported. : 
“The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and 
contemplated by man.”—THomas Brown. 
Bur upon the Bahamas man finds few animals to study and 
contemplate. At the time of their discovery by Columbus in 
1492, they were destitute of all the higher forms of animal life. 
The Bahamas belong to a recent geological age, and are some of 
the ornamental appendages with which the earth was decorated, 
thousands, and perhaps millions of years after it was made, and 
while, with its little partner, the moon, it was, as now, waltzing 
around the sun. This, in connection with the fact of their small 
extent and isolated position, accounts for that absence of animal 
life to which we have referred. Some domesticated animals— 
the cow, the horse, the hog and the sheep—are now found upon 
the islands, but they are a part of the old world’s gift to the new. 
That pet of many a household—man’s friend, companion, guard 
and protector—the much abused dog—is not only frequently met 
with upon the islands, but it is reported that a native breed once 
existed that never barked. While we are unable to vouch for 
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