24 



A NATUJi just's WANDERINQS 



round hedgehogs floating (as they do often) on the siiirffl«e of 

 the water ; their jaws are armed with formidable solid teeth to 

 enable them to feed on the coral ; and the File-fishes^ painted ^ 

 with ccerulean bauds and harnesseil with blue bridle-lines, 

 which not only feed on the coral, but bore their way through 

 the shells of Mollusca to extract the succulent moi*sel8 within. 

 Their hxlies terminate in a must convenient-looking tail, as 

 if made purposely to hantUe them by, and I could not help 

 feeling maliciously imposed on when I did so, by having 

 very precipitately to drop a fine specimen I was lifting for 

 examination, on the sharp hidden spines, with which that 

 f)rgan is set, running into my hand like a series of lances. 

 One of the comnionest genera of fishes in the tropical seas 

 of the Atlantic, Australian and Indo-Pacific regions is the 

 Chmtodoiiy which h particularly attractive on account of the 

 form and the singular bri^lliance of the coloration of its species. 

 The heaps of fish that my boys, a couple of urchins not more 

 than four years of age, used, by alternately harfwoning and 

 diving after them to bring in, formed when piled on the white 

 background of the coral shore, a bright picture indeed from 

 the wonderful variety of their colours — emerald-green, cobalt- 

 blue, rich orange, and even scarlet 



Most of the lagoon fishes are good for food; but there 

 is a species of Searits which requires to be prepared for the 

 table with very great care, for should the gall-bladder be 

 ruptured, and its contents escape into the botly-eavity, the 

 flesh of the fish becomes quite poisoned. Several fatal cases 

 had occurred in the settlement, especially among children, 

 who almost immediately after partaking of the flesh were 

 seized with giddiness and stupor, followed by death, with a 

 dropsie^il state of the body, within two or three hours. The 

 eflect of the application of the bile externally produced simply 

 a bad fester. A woman while cleaning such a fish by the shore, 

 on one occasion threw out the entrails on the water, when a 

 Frigate-bird {Tmhypeie& mimr) which had been hovering over 

 her, swooping down picked up the tempting morsel ; but it 

 had risen only some thirty feet in the air, when it fell back on 

 the water lifeless. The sharks, the albacore (Thtjtmus termo) 

 and the biracuta are the pirates of the lagoon, and the chief 

 agents in re.<?t rail dug its over-population. 



