the Wicked Mate and Boatswain, who set up the
rigging and delighted themselves with a seamanlike refit. Campbell had a
party over the side scrubbing the weeds off, and many of the ship's
company attempted to harpoon the small sharks which came close round in
shoals and provided considerable amusement. These fish were too small to
be dangerous. After breakfast all the scientists and most of the officers
landed and were organised by Uncle Bill into small parties to collect
birds' eggs, flowers, specimens, to photograph and to sketch. A good
lunch was taken ashore, and we looked more like a gunroom picnic party
than a scientific expedition when we left the ship in flannels and all
manner of weird costumes. Wilson, Pennell, and Cherry-Garrard shot a
number of birds, mostly terns and gannets, and climbed practically to the
top of the island, where they could see the Martin Vaz islets on the
horizon. Wilson secured some Trinidad petrels, both white breasted and
black breasted, and discovered that the former is the young bird and the
latter the adult of the same species. He found them in the same nests. We
collected many terns' eggs; the tern has no nest but lays its eggs on a
smooth rock. Also one or two frigate birds were caught. Nelson worked
along the beach, finding sea-urchins, anemones, and worms, which he
taught the sailors the names of--polycheats and sepunculids, I think he
called them. He caught various fishes, including sea-perches, garfish,
coralfish, and an eel, a small octopus and a quantity of sponges.
Trigger-fish were so abundant that many of them were speared from the
ship with the greatest of ease, and Rennick harpooned a couple from a
boat with an ordinary dinner fork. Lillie, who had recovered from
measles, was all about, and his party went for flowering plants and
lichens. He climbed to the summit of the island--2000 ft.--and gave it as
his opinion that the dead trees strewn all round the base of the island
had been carried down with the volcanic debris from higher altitudes. It
was also his suggestion that the island had only recently risen, the
trees which originally grew on the top of the island having died from
unsuitable climate in the higher condition. Gran went up with Lillie and
took photographs. "Birdie" Bowers and Wright were employed collecting
insects, and, with those added by the rest of us, the day's collection
included all kinds of ants, cockroaches, grasshoppers, mayflies, a
centipede, fift