Funafuti; Or, Three Months on a Coral Islandan Unscientific Account of a Scientific Expedition (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVIII. ANIMALS We had been told that there were no land birds in Funafuti, except on one islet, where was to be seen on rare occasions a pigeon, "probably new to science." The man who told us this said the bird was so dreadfully shy that it was quite impossible to get near it, and that was why he had not bagged one. Of course the first thing to be done was to get one of those pigeons, so we landed on the islet celebrated for these shy birds, and Mr. Woolnough, one of our students, brought down a specimen with his first shot before we had been ashore many minutes. After this the pigeons sensibly made themselves scarce, and we had to content ourselves with this solitary unfortunate one. The poor bird scattered its tail-feathers, and the gun scattered some shot over my husband and myself, but these were mere trifles. The tailfeathers were collected, and they and the bird consigned to the methylated spirit tub, there to await fame. There were no other land birds on the atoll, and the cocoa-nut groves were strangely silent, for there was no twittering of small birds, no piping of cicadas or other noisy insects, whilst even the mosquitoes were not so noisy as our Sydney ones, but they made up for that in venom. The Funafuti mosquitoes (namu) in numbers and venom excel any others of the genus that I have had the felicity of meeting. One of these delightful little creatures would make the whole night an agony, and the only way to secure immunity from them was to take a scrap of candle and matches into bed, tuck in the mosquito net carefully all round, and then deliberately hunt and kill very dead every mosquito that had been smart enough to accompany one inside. We each had a narrow bunk to sleep in, and in the abandon of sleep an elbow or a knee would fr...