Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/41

.] and Quiros, who lay a month in the great bay of Espiritu Santo, both declare that in their time there were no mosquitos, but it is probably the small house fly that is meant. The variety of the mosquitos of the present time is interesting with all the suffering they bring; in Mota there is but one kind, which bites only in the daylight; in Vanua Lava, in the rainy season, they drive the natives to bury themselves in the sea-sand for sleep. The same name for the mosquito prevails from the Asiatic continent to Fiji; and the odious blow-fly carries the same name and habits through all the islands. Dr. Guppy commends the habits of the Birgus latro to the attention of residents in the Pacific Ocean. The account of it in Hazlewood's Fiji Dictionary describes how the ugavule climbs cocoanut-trees, pierces and drinks the young nuts, husks and breaks the old nuts and eats the meat; how it is taken by tying grass round the tree it has ascended, so that when descending backwards it reaches as it believes the ground, and loosing its hold on the tree it falls and is stunned; how it throws earth and stones into the face of its pursuers. The same crab or lobster is called ngair in the Banks' Islands, where the natives assert that when it seizes anything, such as a man's hand, with the left and smaller claw, it holds till sundown; on which account that claw has the name of sundown, loaroro. They say also that when a ngair drops a cocoanut from the tree upon a stone to break it, he will only eat it if it is broken smooth; if the fracture is jagged he will not touch it. The Wango people of San Cristoval go beyond probable fact when they relate that on moonlight nights they paddle over to the little island Biu, and quietly creeping up the beach find these crabs occupied in a dance, two large and old ones in the centre, beating time with one claw upon the other, and the rest circling round and waving their claws as the dancing natives wave their clubs; so surprised they are taken in great numbers.