Happily serpents are almost unknown, and the few that exist are not venomous. So we walk through densest underwood, among dead leaves and decaying timber, without fear of meeting anything more alarming than innocent lizards or an occasional land-crab. Of lizards I have seen a large green kind, and scores of a tiny blue and bronze, which flash like jewels in the sunlight. Equally pleasant is the total absence of the countless species of thorny plants with which the whole jungle in Ceylon seemed to bristle. There I was for ever being torn and scratched by cruel thorns, and every shrub seemed armed with sharp needles—even the stems of certain kinds of palm-trees being covered with myriad little daggers and darning-needles two or three inches in length. Here the wild citron is the only thorny tree I have observed, and even that was not indigenous; so the contrast is highly in favour of Fiji, especially in the absence of serpents and other venomous reptiles. But, on the other hand, Fiji has traps for the unwary quite peculiar to itself. The commonest of these is the tree-nettle, which really is a large forest-tree. Beautiful but treacherous are its large glossy leaves, veined with red or white, most attractive to the eye, but anguish to the touch;—days will pass ere the pain of that burning sting subsides. However, forewarned is forearmed, and you are in no danger of accidentally touching these large showy trees, as you so often do the insignificant but obtrusive little nettle of our own woods. There are, however, several other trees which are so intensely poisonous that it is dangerous even to touch them accidentally. One of these is the _kaukaro_, or itch-plant, from which exudes a milky juice causing agony, especially if the tiniest drop should come, even near the eye. Instances have occurred when a man has ignorantly selected this wood, either as timber from which to fashion his canoe, or a spar suitable for his mast; and incautiously sitting on the wood while carpentering, has discovered, when too late, that the subtle poison had entered by every pore, and that his whole body was rapidly breaking out in angry spots, causing an irritation utterly unbearable, and lasting for months, sometimes years.