Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/123

Rh belonged to the birds, and came off with them from the land. I found also this day a large Sepia, or cuttlefish, lying in the water, just dead, but so pulled to pieces by the birds that its species could not be determined. Only this I know, that of it was made one of the best soups I ever ate. It was very large; and its arms, instead of being like the European species, furnished with suckers, were armed with a double row of very sharp talons, resembling in shape those of a cat, and like them, retractable into a sheath of skin, from whence they might be thrust at pleasure.

The weather has now become pleasantly warm, and the barnacles on the ship's bottom seem to regenerate, very few of the old ones remaining alive, but young ones without number, scarcely bigger than lentils.

5th. It now begins to be very hot; thermometer 70°, and damp, with prodigious dews at night, greater than any I have felt. This renews our uncomfortably damp situation, everything beginning to mould, as it did about the equinoctial line in the Atlantic.

7th. No albatrosses have been seen since the 4th, and for some days before that we had only now and then a single one in sight, so we conclude that we have parted with them for good and all.

11th. A steady breeze had blown during the last three days, and there was no sea at all; from whence we concluded that we had passed the line drawn between the Great South Sea and the Pacific Ocean by the Council of the Royal Society; notwithstanding we are not yet within the tropics.

13th. I saw a tropic bird for the first time hovering over the ship, but flying very high: if my eyes did not deceive me it differed from that described by Linnæus (Phaëton aetherius), in having the long feathers of his tail red. The servants with a dipping net took Mimus volutator and Phyllodoce velella, both exactly the same as those we saw in the Atlantic Ocean (lat. 30° 45′, long. 126° 23′ 45″).

15th. This night there was an occultation of Saturn by the moon, which Mr. Green observed, but was unlucky in