Vernon Lyman Kellogg

“ These tough customers have a body seven or eight inches across, and great long strong legs extending a foot on either side. Their shell was of the hardest and their grasping claws of the strongest. They spend most of their time in the cocoanut plantations, feeding upon the fallen nuts. Just how they get at the tender meat inside the cocoanut shell is more or less a question. The natives tell you that the great crab climbs a cocoanut tree, snips off a cocoanut, thus letting it fall heavily three or four score of feet to the ground. ”

“ Another slender-spined sort has white bands around each spine, so that the thickly beset body is black-and-white barred. A larger kind has its heavy spines each encircled by two or three rings at small distances apart. Still a larger species shows heavy, thick, blunt spines much like miniature baseball bats.
We were not the only sea-urchin collectors on the reef. With each low tide would come forth a score or more of natives, mostly half-clad women and children, who would wade about in the shallow water of the reef and among the scattered pools collecting choice tit-bits for an evening feast. ”

“ Occasionally not only cucumber stomach would come out, but also an active and astonished little live fish. This fish, called Fierasfer, seems to have adopted for more or less permanent home the inside of sea-cucumbers. It is a slender, active, bright-eyed little creature which has certainly displayed an extraordinary cleverness in the life-and-death game of hide and seek with its enemies.
Octopuses and squids came to be familiar acquaintances in the reef pools. ”

“ The children of nature showed their God-head in that terrible day and night, and the republican president of eighty millions of people did no more than recognize the brotherhood of man when he sent Seeumanu, sturdy, half-naked chief of a few hundred brown barbarians, the gift of a rich boat to commemorate the day of revelation. ”

“ Of the multitude of reef-inhabiting shells and their variety one can not even venture to speak. The natives use many of the smaller gasteropod shells in making necklaces. Often these little shells are strung alternately with red or yellow seeds. The many cowries attract attention, particularly a small white one with light-brown black-bordered ellipse which is the most abundant shell on the reefs. A large fluted shell, called by the Samoans faigua, is not uncommon, and its flesh is eaten raw by the natives. ”

“ In echinoderms, that is, star fishes, brittle stars, sea-urchins and sea cucumbers, the Samoan reef is very rich. I think we took some two dozen species. An abundant star fish is ultramarine blue, with slender, smooth-surfaced rays. A curious large, reddish-brown, ugly-seeming kind has heavy coarse spines an inch or more long, scattered over it, and these spines sting. Many specimens of the brilliant blue star fish were found with arms slightly or badly mutilated, but all regenerating. ”

“ Collecting sea-cucumbers is easy, but preserving them is not. Rough handling of any sort and above all the plunge into the preserving fluid inevitably caused the cucumbers to eject from the mouth opening a considerable portion of their insides, comprising most of the esophagus, stomach and intestines. ”

“ I have some specimens by me now which show that even a part of a single arm can regenerate all the rest of the body, that is, a new disc and four new arms besides the remainder of the single mutilated arm. ”

“ We scientific collectors were hard pressed in our search for octopuses by the food-hunting natives. These devil-fish are much sought for by natives and are reputed to taste, when cooked, much like chicken. ”