« mr. TT^Tn^T> " 



214 A NATURALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER 



from a heavy gun from the shoulder, and is good up to about 

 fifteen paces. It is fired into the whale just behind the flipper. 



It goes in, and after a while makes a loud explosion, often 

 killing the beast almost at once. Four kinds of whales are 

 common about Kerguelen's Island, but only one, the Southern 

 Whalebone Whale, is regularly hunted. A bomb is fired into 

 the other kinds, if there is a chance of doing so from the ship, and 

 if the beast hit appears maimed, it is then tackled on to with the 

 harpoons. Similar bombs are now regularly used in the North. 



I was sorry to leave Kerguelen's Land, for I enjoyed the 

 place thoroughly. We had wonderfully good weather, and 

 sometimes the sun was extremely hot. The sunrises and sun- 

 sets were often most gorgeous, and the view in evening or early 

 morning up Eoyal Sound, with its wide expanse of sea dotted all 

 over with rocky islands, like some large inland lake, and with 

 Mount Eoss towering blue in the distance, and capped with 

 snow and glaciers, is most grand and beautiful. 



The climate of Kerguelen's Land is, as is that of all the 

 neighbouring islands, remarkably equable. It is never very 

 warm, never very cold. In the middle of winter, during Boss's 

 stay there, the thermometer rarely fell below freezing point, and 

 the snow never lay on the lower land more than two or three 

 days. The whalers told us that it was very rarely that ice 

 formed which would bear; and Sir J. D. Hooker speaks of 

 breaking ice on the Christmas Harbour Lake only two inches 

 thick, and taking from under it Limosella in full flower. 



During our stay, the highest reading of the thermometer was 

 59° F., and the lowest 39°'5 F. : the mean about 43° or 44° : 

 this in the middle of summer, or rather slightly past the middle. 

 The bane of the place consists in the constantly occurring sudden 

 storms of wind, one of which made us drag our anchor at Betsy 

 Cove, and might easily have sent the ship against the rocks, and 

 two of which kept us tediously beating about off the land on two 

 occasions, when we were making from one point to another. 



For a complete list of the birds of Kerguelen's Land, see E. Bowdler 

 Sharpe, F.L.S., F.E.S. " Trans, of Venus Expedition, Zoology of Ker- 

 guelen's Land. Birds." From this paper the names of birds given above 

 are taken. 



