Hook and line fishing is the same here as anywhere else. The favourite baits are “sardines” and pieces of the flesh of the giant clam (_Tridacna_) or of the big whelks (_Fusus_, _Murex_, and _Strombus_), all of which are as easily obtained as lug-worms or mussels at home. Clams’ flesh is the commonest, and anyone interested in curio-collecting should ask a fisherman to keep for him the pearls found in them. As the clam shell is an opaque white, so are the pearls, which, though consequently valueless, are as much true pearls as those formed by the lustrous pearl oyster. “Sardines” are known even to the natives by this name, but are a small species of anchovy of the sardine size. At certain times they collect, presumably for breeding purposes, into shoals in the shallow water so dense as to form black patches 10 or 20 yards across, from which it is easy to collect a bucket-full in a few minutes by means of a sheet. They are kept alive by the fisherman allowing his canoe to be a third full of water in which they swim until thrown overboard to attract fish, or impaled on the hook as bait. The number of species of fish thus caught is large and the greater number are very good. The best are several species of _Caranx_ known as “bayâda,” some of which attain to a great size, sometimes four or five feet long, but the smaller are better for eating. The most peculiar is perhaps the “abu sêf” or “father of a sword,” a most appropriate name. It is ribbon-shaped, three feet long or so, back and belly quite straight and flattened from side to side, in fact just the shape of a sword blade. Further, its sides are of the most dazzling whiteness, brighter than any silver, and its ferocious teeth and vigorous movements bring the terror of a sword to all the smaller fish. The nets and spears bring in the greatest variety of all, the brilliant blue, pink, and green species of the parrot-beaked _Pseudoscarus_, which actually eat coral; the queer bladder-fish, in which also the teeth are fused up like beaks, which can blow themselves up like footballs, in one species (_Tetraodon hystrix_) thus erecting the hundreds of fearful spines into which its scales are modified; the box or coffer fish, the skins of which are quite stiff and bony and cover square bodies, which in some species have horn-like spikes pointing forward over the eyes; file fish (_Ballistes_) which feed by crunching up shellfish (including pearl oysters) with their powerful jaws; in fact enough variety of strange habits and shapes and colours, striking by their brilliance or interesting by their resemblances to the inanimate environment of their possessors, to fill another book (were half known) or stock a museum.