s two future Directors-General of
the Medical Service of the Navy (Sir Alexander Armstrong and Sir John
Watt-Reid), with the present President of the College of Physicians and
my kindest of doctors, Sir Andrew Clark.

Life on board Her Majesty's ships in those days was a very different
affair from what it is now, and ours was exceptionally rough, as we were
often many months without receiving letters or seeing any civilised
people but ourselves. In exchange, we had the interest of being about
the last voyagers, I suppose, to whom it could be possible to meet with
people who knew nothing of fire-arms--as we did on the south Coast of
New Guinea--and of making acquaintance with a variety of interesting
savage and semi-civilised people. But, apart from experience of this
kind and the opportunities offered for scientific work, to me,
personally, the cruise was extremely valuable. It was good for me to
live under sharp discipline; to be down on the realities of existence by
living on bare necessaries; to find out how extremely well worth living
life seemed to be when one woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank,
with the sky for canopy and cocoa and weevilly biscuit the sole prospect
for breakfast; and, more especially, to learn to work for the sake of
what I got for myself out of it, even if it all went to the bottom and I
along with it. My brother officers were as good fellows as sailors ought
to be and generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared
anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous in
pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies, christened
"Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the "Suites a
Buffon," which stood on my shelf in the chart room.

During the four years of our absence, I sent home communication after
communication to the "Linnean Society;" with the same result as that
obtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired at last of
hearing nothing about them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 I
drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it to the Royal Society.
This was my dove, if I had only known it. But owing to the movements of
the ship, I heard nothing of that either until my return to England in
the latter end of the year 1850, when I found that it was printed and
published, and that a huge packet of separate copies awaited me. When I
hear some of my young friends complain of want of sympathy and
encouragement, I am