The weapons used in hunting and fishing are bows and spears, and there are both hand and large seine nets for taking fish. For food there are pigs, musang, dugong, porpoise, fish, turtle and their eggs, molluscs, larvæ (a delicacy), fruit, honey, and roots. Food is cooked and eaten as hot as possible: of the production of fire they, at least in modern times, have no knowledge: this accounts for the great care taken in preserving fire at their camping places, and when travelling. The coast people are extremely expert swimmers and divers, but the interior tribes naturally not so, as their mode of life is somewhat different. The natives are now known to be divided into twelve tribes, if groups that in many cases number at present less than fifty individuals can be so called. Beyond their speech there is little otherwise to distinguish them from each other, except in the case of the Öngés and Jarawas, who differ somewhat from the rest, but are in many ways both alike. The enmity that the Andamanese had ever shown to all strangers was by some believed to have been greatly due to the treatment they had received from early Chinese and Malay traders, or _bêche-de-mer_ collectors; but, prior to 1858, extreme jealousy and distrust prevailed among adjacent tribes, and even amongst scattered communities of the same tribe, and it was not till 1879 that members of all the Andaman tribes (except Öngés and Jarawas) were able to meet on friendly terms at the Homes of the Settlement. Friendly relations have lately been arrived at with most of the inhabitants of Little Andaman (_i.e._ the Öngés), but the Jarawas, who inhabit the North Sentinel, Rutland Island, and South Andaman, have proved to be quite irreconcilable, and their attitude often explains the total disappearance that sometimes follows escapes of the convicts. They are generally feared by all their native neighbours and, with the boldness of ignorance, do not hesitate still to attack even superior numbers of Europeans, as an instance that occurred during the late census operations shows.