788 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
As the date of the sailing of the ship was uncertain, the party was obliged to give up 
the attempt to reach Papeno Valley, and therefore returned to the native hut for the 
night. The sky being remarkably clear, the thermometer sank at daybreak to 55° F. 
(elevation 1800 feet). The Punaru Valley was followed down to the sea shore, and Papiete 
reached along the coast. 
The orange, lemon, and lime, which grow wild all over Tahiti, do not appear to 
deteriorate at all in quality nor in quantity of the fruit produced in the feral condition, 
indeed the fruit almost appears finer and better for running wild. The oranges were 
unanimously pronounced the best ever eaten. The limes lay in cartloads upon the 
ground, rotting in the woods. It would pay well to make lime juice for export in Tahiti. 
Some native insect must have adapted itself completely to the blossoms of the orange 
tribe as a fertilizer, so abundant is the fruit. Vanilla, which is cultivated in the island 
with success, requires, as everywhere else away from its home, to be fertilized by hand. 
A party consisting of Lieutenant Balfour, Mr. Murray, and Mr. Cox visited Lake 
Waihirra under the guidance of Mr. Green the English missionary. Lake Waikirra, 
situated 1700 feet above the level of the sea, is surrounded by perpendicular cliffs, and 
is distant about 45 miles from Papiete. The party reached the lake without much 
difficulty as a path had been cut through the wood for the Governor of the island, who had 
visited the lake just before ; one night was passed in a hut at the side of the lake. The 
lake was said to be unfathomable, but the greatest depth obtained was 10 fathoms. The 
large “eared animals” which were said to inhabit the lake turned out to be immense Eels 
4 and 5 feet in length (. Anguilla mauritiana, Benn., and Anguilla aneitensis, Gtinth.). 
The ground just above the shore near Papiete is everywhere burrowed by large Land 
Crabs, which are difficult to catch, for they never, in the daytime at least, go far from 
their holes, but watch a passer-by from near the mouths of their retreats, and bolt 
in, if suspicious of danger, like rabbits. An old marine, named Leary, who acted as 
a constant assistant to the Naturalists whilst collecting on shore, invented a plan 
by which he caught some of the largest and oldest of the crabs. He tied a bit of meat 
on the end of a string, fastened to a fishing rod, and by dragging the meat slowly 
enticed the crabs from their holes, and then made a dash forward, put his foot in 
the hole, and so caught them. The larger crabs were far more difficult to catch than the 
younger ones. 
The Corals. — Mr. Moseley writes as follows : — “ A Mushroom Coral ( Fungia ) is very 
common all over the reefs at Tahiti. After much search, I found one of the nurse-stocks 
from which the disk-shaped free corals are thrown off as buds, as was originally shown by 
Stutchbury, 1 and confirmed by Semper, who considers the case to be an instance of 
1 G. Stutchbury, An Account of the Mode of Growth of Young Corals of the Genus Fungia, Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond., 
vol. xvii. p. 493, 1830. 
