Our Smallest Possession 



2 33 



r Though Guam lies within the tropics, 

 its climate is tempered throughout the 

 greater part of the year by a brisk trade 

 wind blowing from the northeast and 

 east. Its mountains are not high enough 

 to cause marked differences in the dis- 

 tribution of rain on the island, and the 

 island is not of sufficient extent to cause 

 the daily alternating currents of air 

 known as land and sea breezes. Gen- 

 erally speaking, the seasons conform in 

 a measure with those of Manila, the 

 least rain falling in the colder months 

 or the periods called winter by the 

 natives, and the greater rainfall occur- 

 ring in the warm months, which are 

 called summer by the natives. 



The mjean annual temperature is about 

 8o° F. iii December, the coldest month, 

 to 82 0 F. in May and June, the hottest 

 months. The highest absolute tempera- 

 ture recorded in 1902, 90 0 F., occurred 

 in June and July, the lowest, 66° F., in 

 December. 



Though the mean monthly tempera- 

 ture varies only 2 0 on either side of the 

 mean annual temperature, yet the ' 1 win- 

 ters ' ' of Guam are so definitely marked 

 that certain wasps which during the 

 summer make their nests in the open 

 fields among the bushes invade the 

 houses of the people at that season and 

 hibernate there. 



The forest vegetation of Guam con- 

 sists almost entirely of strand trees, 

 epiphytal ferns, lianas, and a few un- 

 dershrubs. The majority of the species 

 are included in what Schimper has called 

 the Barringtonia formation. The prin- 

 cipal trees are the wild, fertile bread- 

 fruit, Artocarpus communis ; the Indian 

 almond, i Terminalia catappa ; jack-in- 

 the-box,: Hernandia peltata, and the 

 giant banyan. 



CATCHING FISH WITH INTOXICANTS 



The fruit of another common tree 

 {Barringtonia speciosa) the natives use 

 to stupefy fish. 



The fruit is pounded into a paste, in- 

 closed in a bag, and kept over night. 



The time of an especially low tide is se- 

 lected, and bags of the pounded fruit are 

 taken out on the reef next morning and 

 sunk in certain deep holes in the reef. 

 The fish soon appear at the surface, some 

 of them lifeless, others attempting to 

 swim, or faintly struggling with their 

 ventral side uppermost. The natives 

 scoop them in their hands, sometimes 

 even diving for them. Nothing more 

 striking could be imagined than the 

 picture presented by the conglomeration 

 of strange shapes and bright colors — 

 snake-like sea eels, voracious lizard- 

 fishes, gar-like houndfishes, with their 

 jaws prolonged into a sharp beak; long- 

 snouted trumpet-fishes, flounders, por- 

 cupine-fish, bristling with spines; squir- 

 rel-fishes of the brightest and most 

 beautiful colors — scarlet, rose color and 

 silver, and yellow and blue; parrot-fishes 

 (Scams), with large scales, parrot-like 

 beaks, and intense colors, some of them 

 a deep greenish blue, others looking as 

 though painted with blue and pink 

 opaque colors; variegated Chaetodons, 

 called ' 1 sea butterflies ' ' by the natives; 

 trunkfishes with horns and armor, leop- 

 ard-spotted groupers, hideous-looking, 

 warty toadfishes, "nufu " armed with 

 poisonous spines, much dreaded by the 

 natives, and a black fish with a spur on 

 its forehead. 



As many young fish unfit for food are 

 destroyed by this process, the Spanish 

 government forbade this method of fish- 

 ing, but since the American occupation 

 of the island the practice has been re- 

 vived. 



In the mangrove swamps when the 

 tide is low hundreds of little fishes with 

 protruding eyes may be seen hopping 

 about in the mud and climbing among 

 the roots of the Rhizophora and Bru- 

 guiera. These are the widely spread 

 Pcriophthalmus koelreuteri, belonging to 

 a group of fishes interesting from the 

 fact that their air bladder has assumed 

 in a measure the function of lungs, ena- 

 bling the animal to breathe atmospheric 

 air. 



