A Forgotten

Gastropod

Dirty Work by Hawaiian Tourist Bureau Suspected

By A. C. Rowland

IN the mountains of Tahiti, and of the neighbouring islands, is a species of snail called Areho, and by scientists a fearsome Latin title longer by far than the creature itself.

It carries with it its home—a spiral shell closely resembling the periwinkle.

The colours and markings of the shells of one valley differ from those found in ad jacent or more distant valleys. Usually it is found clinging to the underside of the broad leaves of the Fe’i plant.

Obscure and insignificant in its remote mountain home, this modest and retiring gastropod once shook the scientific world to its foundations.

Early in this century, a prowling gas tropodologist discovered that the Areho of Tahiti (contrary to the reputation of the snail family) was positively gallop ing along the broad highway of evolu tion In other words, while the human race— notwithstanding its pomp of brass bands and boast of progress—was ad vancing only a microscopic fraction of a millimeter during a given period of years, the Areho of Tahiti had advanced a kilometer along the road to perfection.

This intelligence brought to Tahiti an eminent professor of zoology from one of the great universities of the Eastern United States.

The professor was one of those delight ful personalities who can impart clear

ness to the most obstruse subject and endow it with interest and charm. Dur ing nearly twenty years he devoted him self to the study of the Tahitian Areho; returning to the islands for long sojourns, at intervals of three or four years. He confirmed the announcement made by the gastropodologist that in the observa tion of the Areho one could actually see nature’s laws of evolution at work, instead of inducing them from the study of fossil trilobites or a yellow tooth found in the gravel beds of Java.

But the human mind—even the colos sal scientific mind —is fickle.

At the end of twenty years, when the professor had been given a banquet of honour by his university, endowed with medals and diplomas by learned societies, and had embodied the results of his re searches in a series of handsome volumes copiously illustrated with expensive plates of many colours, the scientific world be came excited over dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert, and the Areho of Tahiti faded into the night of things forgotten.

There was a rumour at the time that the Hawaiian Tourist Bureau had a hand in this. This patriotic body is alleged to have informed United States institu tions of learning that Hawaii possesses a perfectly good gastropod, as suitable for study as the Tahitian Areho.

Be that as it may, this prodigy of evo lution is proceeding on our interior mountains unobserved; the Areho is at peace; and the professor’s handsome tomes are gathering dust in university libraries; while science is chasing fresh rainbows which loom over the distant hills.

We often have wondered what form the Areho will finally evolve. The pro fessor never told us.

But when we reflect that the primordial cell bom in the Azoic ooze eventually grew into brontosauri, we hear about, and whales we actually see, it is not too fantastic, perhaps, to believe that in some future age—when our unstable old planet, re-arranging its land masses, shall have brought again to the light of day the lost continent of Mu, and thereby raised the mountains of Tahiti to be snow-capped rivals of Cotopaxi and Kilimanjaro—the humble Areho will have evolved to an ele phant, carrying its own howdah, or a pterodactyl China Clipper domesticated to carry over the oceans the speed mani acs of that time, long after its •mechani cal prototype has been rendered immobile by the reckless waste and final exhaus tion of the world petroleum supplies.

When the ship “Challenger” was taking deep-sea soundings in these waters, appalling depths were found all around Tahiti —even in the channel separating Tahiti and Moorea. Therefore, should the ocean bed be raised to the surface, the mountain massif of Tahiti would overshadow all other Equatorial moun tains.

Mr. J. R. Waddell, of the New Guinea Public Health Department, Namatanai, New Guinea, recently married Miss Gwen Tasker, of Sydney, in the Methodist Church, Rabaul.

Mr. Syd. Scholes, of Salamaua, New Guinea, recently announced his engage ment to Miss Phyliss Partridge, of Kojo nup, Western Australia. They will be married in New Guinea in April.

Rev. B. R. C. Nottage, Presbyterian missionary at Tongoa, New Hebrides, is at present spending long furlough in New Zealand.