486 
FOREST AND oTREAM. 
"This is a dead coekroach," he said, pointing to the slough, 
"and that is a live one." It was a marvel to see how big 
the bug was in comparison with the shell Avhich it had just 
discarded as it lay torpid and waiting for the new skin to 
harden. I became better acquainted with the brutes and 
learned to recognize their nocturnal inroads on my fin- 
gers. After I had lost a Few pairs of shoes through their 
nibbling at the seams, I soon recognized that they were 
more of a pest than I had considered possible. 
Twice a year we had flies in abundance. For months 
they vanished from human sight; but as soon as the 
bread fruit came into blossom we were pestered with 
them. They flocked in such crowds that I appreciated 
why the outward mark of all Samoan dignitaries is a fly- 
flapper of horse hair or fiber. The Samoan habit ex- 
poses so much skin that it is easy to see that life would 
he a torment without a sharp brush to get rid of the pests. 
The junior member of my family hated flies. If his hatred 
only extends to the Prince of Flies in the same measure 
his hereafter is sure. He brushed them away and still 
they came and kept a-coming. But he was not to be 
downed. At one of the stores he found a wire trap, which 
was to be baited with sugar and vinegar. To this he 
pinned his faith and set it on the dining table in the lanai. 
Of course, as the place was open to the air in every direc- 
tion, he might just as well have set it on a post in the 
village green for all the good it did. When this fact was 
called to his attention and it was argued to his satisfac- 
tion and disgust that he had undertaken a contract to kill 
all the flies in Samoa, he grew wildly angry and kicked 
the trap into the sea, whence it was washed up on the 
next tide chockablock with long-armed fighting crabs, so 
that he had the satisfaction of catching something, any 
way. But this annoyance visited us only for two months 
in the year — once in what should have been the spring 
and once in what should have been the autumn if the 
torrid zone had been eciuioped with those seasons, but 
always when the bread fruit was flowering. 
From flies to mosciuitoes is an easy transition. The 
old Samoan legend runs somewhat after the fashion of 
Pandora's box and tells how a Samoan girl was impelled 
through curiosity to split open two bamboo tubes, of 
which one discharged a cargo of flies and the other let 
loose the first mosquitoes on the the islands. They are 
fierce birds, these mosquitoes. By day they are hidden 
from the sight of man; at night they are a consuming pest. 
Yet there is one good feature about them — they will not 
come near a light, a habit which they do not share with 
the Jersey brand. Even the moonlight is sufficient to 
keep them off, so that for at least a part of the month it 
was possible to enjoy the delights of the cool night air 
on the broad veranda. Within doors they kept away 
from the light of the lamp, yet there was no way of sitting 
at a table m comfort, except by putting a lighted candle 
on the floor to drive them oft'. 
Still, if the lamplight kept ofi: the mosquitoes it attracted 
swarms of other bugs. There were soft and pudgy moths 
.which buzed abotit in a bewildering fashion and attracted 
flocks of A^ampires which hovered in the shafts of light 
seeking their prey. The most conimon of these evening- 
flyers were black coleoptera about a quarter of an inch 
long, which came by the million. Drawn by the rays 
from the lamps, they seemed possessed of an insane desire 
to fly down the lamp chimneys. Every now and then the 
room would be filled with nauseating fumes of cooking 
beetles, and the flame would be choked out by the mixed 
mass of carcasses, which would have to be cleaned out 
amid the deadly assaults of the mosquitoes, which had 
been waiting for just such an opportunity. 
A rare and always interesting insect novelty were the 
phasmidse. It sometimes happened that one would watch 
the flight of a long and heavy fly headed directly at the 
climbing stephanotis or the shrubs of frangipanni. The 
eye might have noted the place of coming to rest, but as 
soon as the flight was ended the insect seemed to vanish, 
for the most careful search was unable to disclose any- 
thing but dead twigs. It was one of the stick insects and 
a fine example of protective mimicry. An even better 
example was the less rarely seen leaf insect. I have been 
able to see btit few of these at rest. It has happened that I 
have watched them in flight and have waited eagerly to 
note the place in which they would land in order to get 
a better view of the mimicry. At distances of from 15 to 
20 feet the insects have taken alarm, the leaflike wings 
have ceased to beat and have remained outstretched. 
Stopping in its flight, the insect has slowly fluttered to 
the ground, and it has been impossible to recognize it in 
the grass, so deceptive was its resemblance to the tender 
twigs of the ylang-ylang. 
In the chronic revolutions of Samoan politics I knew 
a man who had no hesitation in going tmarmed among the 
troops of the Samoan rebels, and the Malietoa forces 
were just as bad. He was able to send budding rebellion 
back home again, and never seemed to think that he had 
been in any personal danger. But he was scared to death 
of the Samoan spiders, although they are all as innocent 
as so many guinea pigs. One spider that ran over the 
houses at all times and everj'where was as good as a cir- 
cus. It was a light-colored beast, about a quarter of an 
inch long. It built no nest or web, but was a himter pure 
and simple. Its mode of capture was to stalk the flies 
when they came to rest on the walls. It would begin its 
hunting on a fly a yard or more away, and would slowly 
creep up on its victim with a nervous quiver that showed 
plainly the delight wdiich the animal took in its game. At 
the distance of rather less than a foot the spide would 
collect itself for the final rush and remain all in a trem- 
ble of excitement. When the fly turned its head away 
the spider would leap through the air, and seldom failed 
to catch the fly. It would puzzle any student to know 
how it was done, but I have seen these hunting spiders in 
a leap of a foot directly upward clear with ease an obsta- 
cle more than 2 inches high, and in the last of its flight 
swerve as much as 3 inches to one side to allow for move- 
ment of the fly after the spring had begun. Theoretically, 
the thing violates every known rule of mechanics, but so 
did the curve in pitching a baseball when the college pro- 
fessors first began to study that paradox. The largest 
spider, and ft is a very common one in Samoa, is a gang- 
ling legged monster that can hardly be covered by an 
ordinary saucer. It is smooth all over, the accident of 
having it fall on my hands having shown me that it is 
as smooth as velvet; the eyes are closely grouped to- 
gether, and in the sunlight blaze like gems, and in the 
dark there is a glitter from them that seems to show a 
phosphorescent action of some sort. This spider looks 
bad, but it is perfectly harmless for all its grim appear- 
ance — in fact, the Samoan children play Avitli thetn. It 
also spins no web. There are web spiders, all nocturnal, 
but I have never seen them. Their cords arc often found 
stretched across the paths, and ^rc tough enough to 
pull off the hat of the passer. 
Popular ideas credit all the tropics with the scorpion. 
There are plenty in Samoa — little fellows about an inch 
long, and they may be foimd by rolling over any log or 
stone. They seldom sting, and w^hen they do the wound 
is not so bad as the stjng of the mosquito. They abound 
in all boarded houses, but owing to their shy habits and 
nocturnal disposition they are seldom seen, and their 
only trace is the discovery of their slough, with the sting 
curled up in a menacing attitude. 
The centipede is very common — a dreaded neighbor. 
Charles Warren Stoddard has written of it as a discon- 
nected chain of unpleasant circtimstances. They are so 
numerous that it is never safe to thrust one's hand into 
the thatch of a Samoan house at any time. It is not 
uncommon for them to drop from the roofs of these 
houses to the floor in the midst of some of the evening 
deliberations of the native politicians. They hold the 
"atualoa," — the '"long god"— in great fear, and such delib- 
erations invariabl}^ adjourn until sure that the centipede 
has been destroyed. The sting is painful at the time and 
for da3's afterward; but it is in no sense dangerous. 
These centipedes frequently exceed a foot in length, with 
each of the twenty-one segments as large as a nickel. 
No house is ever free from the "unga" or hermit crabs, 
which make a feasome racket at night as they carry their 
topbea\fy borrowed shells into all sorts of places where it 
was not meant that they should go. There seem to be 
two distinct classes of them. For one class the limit of 
size seems to be the small univalve shell not bigger 
aroimd than a shilling, In these the two claws are very 
nearly of the same size. The large hermits are a dozen 
times as big; the claws are disproportionate, and the 
larger can give a very sharp nip — one that the incautious 
meddler will not be likely to forget so long as the finger 
remains black and blue. They serve a useful end in 
domestic affairs, for they seek out and destroy the eggs 
of countless insect pests. 
Concerning the rats, known indifferently as "imoa," 
'■isumu"and"io]e,"I shall notwrite nowin this summation, 
for my friend Talolo introduced me to them as a game 
bird, and the account of our hunting and the pleasure of 
eating the catch will serve well for an article by itself. 
Still, I may mention that the imoa gave me my first 
chance to be real funny in Samoan. 
I said to Tonga as she sat sewing by my side one 
day while I was studjnng out sentences in the language 
of the country, "Ua 'ai Samoa moa ma imoa." 
"Moi!" rephed my maid, stopping to light her seventy- 
second cigarette for that day; "that's so. I think so 
Samoa people she eat hen and eat rat. Samoa people fool 
people — never been circus and Chicago, except me." 
It had stritck me as funny, that collocation of Samoans 
and moa hens and imoa rats. But I learned in time that 
Samoan is tongue you cannot joke in. When you say a 
thing it is either the truth, which is contrary to the cus- 
tom of the country, or else it is a lie and therefore a work 
of art; but a jest is impossible. 
The bush is full of blue lizards — the pili. Every house 
is fairly alive with a smaller lizard — the mo'o — which is 
one of the geckoes with leaflike toes. They are little 
fellows, about 2 inches long, prettily colored in a light 
and a dark shade of brown. They can run up a glass 
window pane quite as safely as the flies, on which they 
feed. They are very tame, and will run up the hand when 
stretched out toward them, and a sharp ear can catch 
their little cheeping cry when they are content with their 
stirroundings. But when alarmed they are off like a 
flash of light, and Avill take the most reckless leaps. I 
have seen them land safely at the end of a 20-foot jump. 
Yet Avhen cornered they have no hesitation about snap- 
ping off the most of their tails. That was a maddening 
puzzle to my small cat. The sight of a mo'o anywhere was 
an immediate challenge to the kitten. She would imme- 
diately start on the hunt, for the most part a fruitless 
chase, for the little lizards could scuttle off faster than 
two cats. Yet when the kitten did succeed in landing on 
the lizard there followed a scene of bewilderment. The 
mo'o invariably snapped off its tail, which was left wrig- 
gling in one part of the veranada, while the lizard ran off 
to a short distance and awaited developments. The kitten 
never failed to be puzzled bj' the remarkable circumstance 
— she never knew whether to catch the lizard or the tail. 
If the mo'o moved the kitten went for it; but it always 
stopped short to keep an eye on the wriggles of the tail. 
As soon as she turned back to take care of the tail the 
mo'o got in motion and had to be looked after. Him- 
dreds of times I have watched the dilemma, and the 
ending was always the same— the lizard got away and the 
kitten had to be content with the bony tail. But there 
were lots of lizards about my house snroutina: new tails. 
Llewella PrERCE Churchill. 
The Panther's Scream, 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In support' of your assertion that the panther does 
scream, I offer the fact that in his early life in Vermont 
my father repeatedly heard the scream under circum- 
stances that made it unmistakable. He also knew others 
who had the same experience. He also knew several 
well authenticated instances of the panther attacking 
human beings— some of these occurred in the day time. 
Undoubtedly the panther is less likely to attack a man 
than formerly— with him as with us, greater contact 
with man is likely to produce greater caution: but still 
he is not a beast to be trifled with. And when I read the 
statement of some writers that they never heard of an 
instance of attack on a man by a panther, I felt like ex- 
claiming, "Where have you been all sumtner?" Horse- 
flesh lacerated by the panther's claws when springing at 
the rider and the riders' torn clothes attested one in- 
stance in the adjoining town, and others that my father 
knew of were equally well authenticated. Juvenal. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach us at the 
latest by. Monday and as much earlier as practicable. 
Communication Among Animals. 
In "The Trail of the Sandhill Stag" Mr, Thompson 
several times intimates the fact of well understood com- 
munication between the various denizens of the woods. 
Some years of experience leaves no doubt in my mind 
that such is the fact. 
A bluejay convention which I attended last summer is 
a case in point. In the early part of the hunting season 
I had gone to a favorite place to watch for deer. One 
or two jays discovered me one morning soon after I took 
my silent position. ■ They made a loud outcry, and soon 
the jays were coming from all directions and the air 
was full of their varied and discordant notes. Then, as 
in a political convention, when many try to get the floor 
at the same time and motions and points of order give 
the chairman a hard time, and speakers a harder tiiiie 
to say their little say, the assembled birds clamorously 
contended for their opinions. After a noisy debate of 
almost ten minutes, it semed to me I could hear the 
making of a motion, its putting by the chairman, a full 
vote upon the question, the announcement by the chair- 
man, and an adjournment took place as iinmediate, 
orderly and effective as need be anywhere. The mem- 
bers of the convention departed as swiftly as they came 
and less noisily, and within three minutes the woods 
were as silent as though it had not been. I was much 
interested and amused, for I never saw anything of the 
kind so ridiculously near human speech and action. It> 
had its effect. Not a deer disturbed my reverie all that 
forenoon. But this was not all. During the afternoon 
the subject was more fully illustrated by a note of warn- 
ing. I was perched in a tree on the shore of a pond. 
Opposite was a hillside, and numerous deer trails wound 
down the slope and centered at the pond. The sharp 
crack of a stick arrested my attention, and for several 
minutes my hopes were raised by the gradual but unmis- 
takable approach of a deer. He was quite a distance off, 
but was surely coming. He did come, nearer, nearer, 
and I began to feel almost sure of a shot, when sud- 
denly the shrill note of warning from a hitherto silent 
bluejay stopped the approach, and I neither saw the 
deer nor heard him more. Did I shoot the jay? I felt 
like it, but he did not show himself; and then I reflected 
that probably he had merely obeyed the behest of the 
morning's convention, and deserved to live for his fidel- 
ity. On the whole the day was full of interest and I thor- 
oughly enjoyed it, although I got no deer. Does not 
life often present parallels of experience, when the de- 
feat of cherished plans is more than compensated for by 
other things, if we but aA^ail ottrselves of them? 
Juvenal. 
Eagles and Infants. 
In comment upon our recent note on the stories of 
eagles carrying off children, Mr. C. J, Cornish, of the 
London Zoo, sends us some notes from his article in 
the December Cornhill which bear on the subject: 
Most people must have felt doubts as to the stories 
of eagles attacking men, even when their nests were 
being robbed. But an instance of such an attack oc- 
curred not long ago to Mr. Turner-Turner, a well- 
known sportsman and amateur fur hunter, in British 
Columbia. Seeing an eagle in the distance, he stood still 
to watch it, as he had not seen one in the neighborhood 
where he was shooting. "The ground was covered with 
6 inches of snow, except on the summits of the moun- 
tains, where it was deeper," writes Mr. Turner- Turner, 
"and I was therefore a conspicuous object. Presently I 
was surprised to see how close the bird was approach- 
ing, but concluded that it must have mistaken me stand- 
ing still for a stump, and would immediately discover 
its error. It never deviated from its course or changed 
its position, except to drop its legs slightly when about 
10 yards off, and in line with my head. These it quickly 
drew up again, flying directly at my face, which- so took 
me by surprise as to leave me hardly time to throw up 
my rifle as a guard, and to wave my left hand. This 
caused the eagle to pass above me with the rush of half 
a dozen rockets. Up to this time the thought of harming 
the bird never occurred to me. But I then faced about 
and fired at my retreating foe. Then with a rapid wheel 
it turned to renew the attack, this time making an un- 
doubted and intentional swoop at my head, in which it 
would have been successful had I not suddenly ducked. 
It was not a common bald eagle, but, as I afterwards 
learnt, a mountain or golden eagle."^ 
The stories of infants carried off in the Alps by large 
raptors have been wrongly attributed to the lammer- 
geyer, and in all probability the golden eagle was the cul- 
prit, as the lamrnergeyer is not particularly bold, and 
mainly feeds on bones and carrion. But it was also 
stated that the lammergeyer had such weak, vulturine 
claws, "like a turkey's," , that it could not carry a heavy 
weight at all. I had sufficient remembrances of the 
curved talons of a fine lammergeyer at Amsterdam to 
doubt this, writes Mr. Cornish. There is nothing like 
seeing things for one's self, so I did some kidnapping on 
my own account by stealing a little girl's largest and 
favorite doll, bigger than "a long-clothes baby," and had 
it dressed in the complete clothes of a child of a year old, 
fastened a 7-pound weight to its waist, which brought it 
up well over 8 pounds- — ^that being about the weight of a 
six weeks' old baby — and asked permission to look at 
some lammergeyers' skins in a collection which con- 
tained specimens from all parts of Europe and Asia. 
I was shown several drawers full of the dried skins of 
the great gypeetus or "vulture" eagle obtained in different 
mountain ranges from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas. 
Needless to say, I chose a big one — a bird from the 
Himalayas, with very large talons, and taking out the 
"baby" from the bag I forced open the contracted foot, 
pushed the front and back talons through the infant's 
clothes at its waist, and allowed the other claws to close 
on and catch where they liked. Taking hold of the 
shank of the leg so that the skin might not tear, I found 
that the claws of one foot of a dead and dried lammer- 
geyer were sharp enough and curved enough to hold up 
the clothes and 8-pound dummy of a baby. This shows 
how greatly the offensive equipment of a species may 
be underestimated. 
Last month a story widely published in the French 
press gave a circumstantial account of the carrying oflf 
