interior of every beast that is killed, and being also a surgeon, I suppose the subject must be interesting.  White terns abounded on the island.  They were ghost-like and so tame that they would sit on one’s hat.  They laid their eggs on pinnacles of rock without a vestige of nest, and singly.  They looked just like stones.  I suppose this was a protection from the land-crabs, about which you will have heard.  The land-crabs of Trinidad are a byword and they certainly deserve the name, as they abound from sea-level to the top of the island.  The higher up the bigger they were.  The surface of the hills and valleys was covered with loose boulders, and the whole island being of volcanic origin, coarse grass is everywhere, and at about 1500 feet is an area of tree ferns and subtropical vegetation, extending up to nearly the highest parts.  The withered trees of a former forest are everywhere and their existence unexplained, though Lillie had many ingenious theories.  The island has been in our hands, the Germans’, and is now Brazilian.  Nobody has been able to settle there permanently, owing to the land-crabs.  These also exclude mammal life.  Captain Kidd made a treasure depot there, and some five years ago a chap named Knight lived on the island for six months with a party of Newcastle miners—­trying to get at it.  He had the place all right, but a huge landslide has covered up three-quarters of a million of the pirate’s gold.  The land-crabs are little short of a nightmare.  They peep out at you from every nook and boulder.  Their dead staring eyes follow your every step as if to say, ’If only you will drop down we will do the rest.’  To lie down and sleep on any part of the island would be suicidal.  Of course, Knight had a specially cleared place with all sorts of precautions, otherwise he would never have survived these beasts, which even tried to nibble your boots as you stood—­staring hard at you the whole time.  One feature that would soon send a lonely man off his chump is that no matter how many are in sight they are all looking at you, and they follow step by step with a sickly deliberation.  They are all yellow and pink, and next to spiders seem the most loathsome creatures on God’s earth.  Talking about spiders [Bowers always had the greatest horror of spiders]—­I have to collect them as well as insects.  Needless to say I caught them with a butterfly net, and never touched one.  Only five species were known before, and I found fifteen or more—­at any rate I have fifteen for certain.  Others helped me to catch them, of course.  Another interesting item to science is the fact that I caught a moth hitherto unknown to exist on the island, also various flies, ants, etc.  Altogether it was a most successful day.  Wilson got dozens of birds, and Lillie plants, etc.  On our return to the landing-place we found to our horror that a southerly swell was rolling in, and great breakers were bursting on the beach.  About five P.M. we all collected and looked at the whaler