set out to collect hermit crabs, to be used as fish
bait. These curious creatures are to be found almost anywhere in the
equatorial islands of the Pacific; their shell houses ranging in size
from a pea to an orange, and if a piece of coco-nut or fish or any other
edible matter is left out overnight, hundreds of hermits will be found
gathered around it in the morning. To extract the crabs from their
shells, which are of all shapes and kinds, is a very simple matter--the
hard casing is broken by placing them upon a large stone and striking
them a sharp blow with one of lesser size. My companion and myself soon
collected a heap of "hermits," when presently he took one up in his
hand, and holding it close to his mouth, whistled softly. In a few
moments the crab protruded one nipper, then another, then its red
antennae, and allowed the boy to take its head between his finger and
thumb and draw its entire body from its shell casing.

"That is the way the _kili_ (snipe) gets the _uga_ (crab) from its
shell," he said. "The _kili_ stands over the _uga_ and whistles softly,
and the _uga_ puts out his head to listen. Then the bird seizes it in
his bill, gives it a backward jerk and off flies the shell."

Now I had often noticed that wherever hermit crabs were plentiful along
the outer beaches of the lagoon, I was sure to find snipe, and sometimes
wondered on what the birds fed. Taking up two or three "hermits" one
by one, I whistled gently, and in each case the creature protruded the
nippers, head and shoulders, and moved its antennae to and fro as if
pleasurably excited.

On the following day I shot three snipe, and in the stomachs of each I
found some quite fresh and some partly digested hermit crabs. The thick,
hard nippers are broken off by the bird before he swallows the soft,
tender body.

*****

In a recent number of _Chambers's Journal_ the present writer was much
interested in a short paragraph dealing with the commercial value of the
skin of the shark, and, having had many years' experience as a
trader and supercargo in the South Seas, desires to add some further
information on a somewhat interesting subject.

In all the equatorial islands of the North and South Pacific, shark
fishing is a very profitable industry to the natives, and every trading
steamer or sailing vessel coming into the ports of Sydney or Auckland
from the islands of the mid-Pacific, always brings some tons of shark
fins and tails and shark ski