Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/267

Rh Though Guam lies within the tropics, its climate is tempered throughout the greater part of the year by a brisk trade wind blowing from the northeast and east. Its mountains are not high enough to cause marked differences in the dis- tribution of rain on the island, and the island is not of sufficient extent to cause the daily alternating currents of air known as land and sea breezes. Gen- erally speaking, the seasons conform in a measure with those of Manila, the least rain falling in the colder months or the periods called winter by the natives, and the greater rainfall occur- ring in the warm months, which are called summer by the natives.

The mean annual temperature is about 8o° F. iii December, the coldest month, to 82 0 F. in May and June, the hottest months. The highest absolute tempera- ture recorded in 1902, 90 0 F., occurred in June and July, the lowest, 66° F., in December.

Though the mean monthly tempera- ture varies only 2 0 on either side of the mean annual temperature, yet the "win- ters" of Guam are so definitely marked that certain wasps which during the summer make their nests in the open fields among the bushes invade the houses of the people at that season and hibernate there.

The forest vegetation of Guam consists almost entirely of strand trees, epiphytal ferns, lianas, and a few un- dershrubs. The majority of the species are included in what Schimper has called the Barringtonia formation. The prin- cipal trees are the wild, fertile bread- fruit, Artocarpus communis ; the Indian almond, i Terminalia catappa ; jack-in- the-box,: Hernandia peltata, and the giant banyan.

The fruit of another common tree {Barringtonia speciosa) the natives use to stupefy fish.

The fruit is pounded into a paste, in- closed in a bag, and kept over night. The time of an especially low tide is se- lected, and bags of the pounded fruit are taken out on the reef next morning and sunk in certain deep holes in the reef. The fish soon appear at the surface, some of them lifeless, others attempting to swim, or faintly struggling with their ventral side uppermost. The natives scoop them in their hands, sometimes even diving for them. Nothing more striking could be imagined than the picture presented by the conglomeration of strange shapes and bright colors — snake-like sea eels, voracious lizard- fishes, gar-like houndfishes, with their jaws prolonged into a sharp beak; long- snouted trumpet-fishes, flounders, por- cupine-fish, bristling with spines; squirrel-fishes of the brightest and most beautiful colors — scarlet, rose color and silver, and yellow and blue; parrot-fishes (Scams), with large scales, parrot-like beaks, and intense colors, some of them a deep greenish blue, others looking as though painted with blue and pink opaque colors; variegated Chaetodons, called "sea butterflies" by the natives; trunkfishes with horns and armor, leopard-spotted groupers, hideous-looking, warty toadfishes, "nufu" armed with poisonous spines, much dreaded by the natives, and a black fish with a spur on its forehead.

As many young fish unfit for food are destroyed by this process, the Spanish government forbade this method of fishing, but since the American occupation of the island the practice has been revived.

In the mangrove swamps when the tide is low hundreds of little fishes with protruding eyes may be seen hopping about in the mud and climbing among the roots of the Rhizophora and Bru- guiera. These are the widely spread Periophthalmus koelreuteri, belonging to a group of fishes interesting from the fact that their air bladder has assumed in a measure the function of lungs, enabling the animal to breathe atmospheric air.