Strangest of all fishing is that of the _mbalolo_, which is still an annual festival in the districts where it is taken. The _mbalolo_ is a marine annelid about six inches long and of the thickness of vermicelli. It is found on certain sea reefs in various parts of the Samoan, Tongan and Fijian groups, and probably elsewhere in the Pacific. For ten months in the year it is never seen at all. Somewhere deep in a reef cavern it is growing to maturity, but on the night of the third quarter of the October and the November moons it swarms in myriads to the surface and dies, phoenix-like, in the propagation of its kind. So exact a time-keeper is it that it gave names to two months in the native almanac. October was called the _Little Mbalolo_, because the swarm in that month was comparatively insignificant; the _Great Mbalolo_ was November, and preparations for the fishing in that month were made several weeks in advance. The fact--and it is a fact--that an annelid should observe lunar time would not be very remarkable in itself, but it seems that the _Mbalolo_ observes solar time as well. As Mr. Whitmee has pointed out, the moon directs its choice of a day, and it follows that the creature cannot maintain regular intervals of either twelve or thirteen lunations without changing the calendar month of its reappearance. For two years it rises after a lapse of twelve lunations, and then it allows thirteen to pass, but since even this arrangement will gradually sunder solar and lunar time it must intercalate one lunation every twenty-eight years in order to keep to its dates. It has now been under the observation of Europeans for more than sixty years, and it has not once disappointed the natives who are on the watch for it. What are the immediate impulses of tide or of season that impel it to rise on its appointed day no one has attempted yet to show. Consider for a moment how many centuries must have passed before the desultory native mind became impressed with its regularity. Even on the night of the _Great Mbalolo_ it is not a conspicuous object on the sea. Mere chance must have brought the fisherman into a _mbalolo_ shoal; years must have passed before a second chance again revealed its habits; decades before the unmethodical mind of natural man had realized its annual recurrence and had noted the day and the hour. It is only at certain points in the sea reef fringing outlying islands that there are _mbalolo_ holes. The canoes congregate there before midnight. The behaviour of the fish is the first signal; they are there in hundreds, dashing hither and thither in a criss-cross of phosphorescence. Towards morning they lie, stupid from surfeit, flapping their fins helplessly on the surface, and are speared in great numbers. It is an orgie of rapacity and greed. _Salala_ gorge themselves on _mbalolo_; _sanka_ devour the _salala_; rock-cod swallow the _sanka_; a few sharks fill their bellies with rock-cod; and man, as usual, preys upon all alike.