d
decayed roots, two or three feet high, from the summit of which the
leaves, frequently six feet in length, arch gracefully outwards. The
tussock grass has been likened to a palm on a small scale, but altogether
it reminded me more of the Xanthorrhoea, or grass-tree of Australia. We
saw many seals swimming about among the kelp, and on the shore found the
carcases of several which had lately been killed with clubs, each of the
skulls having been fractured by a blow at the root of the nose. They were
of the kind known here as the hair-seal, the skin of which is of little
value. It is still very abundant; but the fur-seal, from the
indiscriminate slaughter of old and young for many years back has become
scarce, and is now confined to a few favourite localities--rookeries as
they are called, a name also applied at the Falklands to any great
breeding place of penguins or other seafowl. A few days ago a party of
five sealers returned to the settlement after a short absence, with the
skins of no less than 120 fur-seals, worth, I was told, twenty-five
shillings each.

Here I found two pairs of the sheathbill (Chionis alba) a bird whose
place in the system has puzzled ornithologists. It has been variously
considered as being one of the galinaceous birds, the pigeons, the
waders, and even as belonging to the web-footed order. Its habits are
those of the oyster-catchers,* however different the form of the beak,
which in the sheathbill is short, stout, and pointed, and enveloped at
the base by a waxy-looking sheath. Its feet are like those of a
gallinaceous bird, yet one which I wounded took voluntarily to the water
and swam off to a neighbouring point to rejoin its mate. Cuvier, besides
erroneously mentioning that it is a native of New Holland, states that it
feeds on carrion; the stomachs of two which I examined contained seaweed,
limpets, and small quartz pebbles. The people here call it the rock-dove,
and from its snow-white plumage it forms a conspicuous object along the
shores.

(*Footnote. When the above was written I had not seen the remarks on
Chionis by M. Blainville, whose anatomical investigation assigns to it
precisely the same position in the system--or next the
oyster-catchers--which appeared to me to have been indicated by its
habits. Voyage de la Bonite Zoologie tome 1 page 107 plate (oiss.) 9.)

We resumed our homeward voyage on July 25th, and thirty-six days
afterwards crossed the equator in 24 degrees west l