“That is the way the _kili_ (snipe) gets the _uga_ (crab) from its shell,” he said. “The _kili_ stands over the _uga_ and whistles softly, and the _uga_ puts out his head to listen. Then the bird seizes it in his bill, gives it a backward jerk and off flies the shell.”
Now I had often noticed that wherever hermit crabs were plentiful along the outer beaches of the lagoon, I was sure to find snipe, and sometimes wondered on what the birds fed. Taking up two or three “hermits” one by one, I whistled gently, and in each case the creature protruded the nippers, head and shoulders, and moved its antennæ to and fro as if pleasurably excited.
On the following day I shot three snipe, and in the stomachs of each I found some quite fresh and some partly digested hermit crabs. The thick, hard nippers are broken off by the bird before he swallows the soft, tender body.
In a recent number of _Chambers’s Journal_ the present writer was much interested in a short paragraph dealing with the commercial value of the skin of the shark, and, having had many years’ experience as a trader and supercargo in the South Seas, desires to add some further information on a somewhat interesting subject.
In all the equatorial islands of the North and South Pacific, shark fishing is a very profitable industry to the natives, and every trading steamer or sailing vessel coming into the ports of Sydney or Auckland from the islands of the mid-Pacific, always brings some tons of shark fins and tails and shark skins. The principal market for the former is Hong Kong, but the Chinese merchants of the Australasian Colonies will always buy sharks’ fins and tails at from 6d. to 11d. per lb., the fins bringing the best price on account of the extra amount of glutinous matter they contain, and the which are highly relished by the richer classes of Chinese as a delicacy. The tails are also valued as an article of food in China; and, apart from their edible qualities, have a further value as a base for clear varnishes, &c.; and I was informed by a Chinese tea-merchant that the glaze upon the paper coverings of tea-chests was due to a preparation composed principally of the refuse of sharks’ fins, tails, and skins.