i34 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
and the oil from it certainly is, as the writer 
knows by experience, a wonderful remedy for 
rheumatism. When the fruit of the pandanus 
tree is fully ripe, and the rich, juicy drupes fall 
upon the sandy soil, the robber crab thrives, 
and its heavy tail swells out with the fatness 
thereof till it appears to be as much as it can do 
to carry it. 
The immense muscular power in the two 
great nippers of a full-sized robber crab renders 
the greatest caution necessary when one is being 
captured. If by any mischance one’s hand 
should come within reach of his grip, the bones 
of whatever finger or fingers are seized would be 
crushed. I well remember one such instance in 
Funafuti Lagoon, an island of the Ellice Group 
in the South Pacific. A young native employed 
by an old white trader there one day accom¬ 
panied his master to a little islet on the west 
side of the atoll, to search for uu. A quantity 
of teased-out coconut fibre and a pile of coconut 
shells at the foot of a large pua tree indicating 
the burrow of one of unusual size, the native 
searched for and soon found the hole leading to 
the lair. Cautiously inserting his arm up to 
the shoulder to feel in which way the tunnel 
