Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/122

64 9th. This morning some seaweed floated past the ship, and my servant declares that he saw a beetle fly over her. I do not believe he would deceive me, and he certainly knows what a beetle is, as he has these three years been often employed in taking them for me.

15th. Went in the boat and killed Procellaria velox, Nectris munda and fuliginosa, which two last are a new genus between Procellaria and Diomedea: this we reckon a great acquisition to our bird collection.

17th. Saw several porpoises without any "pinna dorsalis," black on the back, white under the belly and on the nose. We saw also an albatross different from any other I have seen, it being black all over, except the head and bill, which were white.

21st. A bird not seen before attended the ship; it was about the size of a pigeon, black above and light-coloured underneath. It darted swiftly along the surface of the water in the same manner as I have observed the Nectris to do, of which genus it is probably a species.

26th. Albatrosses began to be much less plentiful than they have been (lat. 41° 8′).

3rd March. Killed Procellaria velox, velificans, sordida, melanopus, lugens, agilis, and Diomedea exulans. The albatross was very brown, exactly the same as the first I killed, which, if I mistake not, was nearly in the same latitude on the other side of the continent. Caught Holothuria obtusata, Phyllodoce velella, exactly the same as those taken on the other side of the continent, except in size, which in these did not exceed that of an English sixpence. Dagysa vitrea was also the same as that taken off Rio de Janeiro; now, however, we had an opportunity of seeing its extraordinary manner of breeding. The whole progeny, fifteen or twenty in number, hung in a chain from one end of the mother, the oldest only, or the largest, adhering to her, and the rest to each other.

Among a large quantity of birds I had killed (sixty-two in all) I found two Hippobosca, or forest flies, both of one species, and different from any described. More than probably these