Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/317

Rh this mess. It totally banished that troublesome costiveness which I believe most people are subject to when at sea. Whether or no this is a more beneficial method of administering wort as a preventative than the common, must be left to the faculty, especially that excellent surgeon Mr. M'Bride, whose ingenious treatise on the sea-scurvy can never be sufficiently commended. For my own part I should be inclined to believe that the salubrious qualities of the wort which arise from fermentation might in some degree at least be communicated to the wheat when thoroughly saturated with its particles, which would consequently acquire a virtue similar to that of fresh vegetables, the greatest resisters of sea-scurvy known.

3rd. We got fast on to the westward, but the compass showed that the hearts of our people hanging that way caused a considerable north variation, which was sensibly felt by our navigators, who called it a current, as they do usually everything which makes their reckonings and observations disagree.

5th. The captain told me that he had during this whole voyage observed that between the degrees of 40° and 37° south latitude the weather becomes suddenly milder in a very great degree, not only in the temperature of the air, but in the strength and frequency of gales of wind, which increase very much in going towards 40°, and decrease in the same proportion as you approach 37°.

11th. Went out shooting and killed Diomedea exulans and impavida: saw D. profuga; Procellaria melanopus, velox, oceanica, vagabunda, and longipes; Nectris fuliginosa. Took up with dipping-net Mimus volutator, Medusa pelagica, Dagysa cornuta, Phyllodoce velella, and Holothuria obtusata, of which last an albatross that I had shot discharged a large quantity, incredible as it may appear that an animal should feed upon this blubber, whose innumerable stings give a much more acute pain to a hand which touches them than nettles.

12th. I again went out in my small boat and shot much the same birds as yesterday: took up also chiefly the same