i3 95 . ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION. 99 



was much delayed by bad weather, and the 21st of September found 

 her barely clear of the Irish Coast. 



On the 24th of November, in Lat. 40 39' S. and Long. 48 57' W., 

 " many hundreds of small whales or porpoises " were seen travelling 

 south ; " they resembled the American drawings of the pigmy sperm, 

 but had a larger dorsal fin" (p. 141). Mr. Murdoch remarks in a 

 footnote that on the return voyage in the following March a similar 

 abundance of apparently the same species was met with nearly in the 

 same position, and adds that " Almost all the whales and porpoises 

 we saw south of the line on our voyage out were travelling south or 

 south-east, and those we saw on the voyage home were travelling 

 north with their young. . . I conclude they have a grand 

 nursery down in the ice, where they bring forth their young in the 

 Antarctic summer, and come north when the winter sets in." The 

 whales seen in such numbers were probably a species of Ziphioid, 

 which would appear to be as strictly migratory in these regions as its 

 relative in the Northern Hemisphere. 



Many birds were seen about the 1st of December as the ship 

 approached the Falkland Islands ; but unfortunately, owing to the 

 author's hurried exodus from Edinburgh, and we presume also that 

 of his companion, the " Naturalist " of the " Balaena," he was unable 

 to bring books on bird life in the South Seas, and therefore was only 

 able to give them names by which they would scarcely be recognised 

 by " scientists " at home. Stanley Harbour in the Falkland Islands 

 was reached on the 8th of December, and here bird life seems to have 

 been varied and abundant : " hundreds of divers and ducks scurried 

 over the dull green water, splashing and diving — waiting at times till 

 we were nearly on the top of them before they moved away. Gulls 

 and petrels flew from the shores and circled round our masts — 

 strange, unfamiliar, silent birds, with a quaint, old-world look and 

 odd colours, as if they had been designed for a pantomime, or had 

 just flown out of a Noah's Ark. Some of them were the gigantic 

 petrel, I think — big, clumsy birds, nearly as large as an albatross, 

 with coarse feathers of a raw chocolate colour, and big, yellowish 

 beaks ; some of these birds were almost entirely white. Some of 

 the gulls were like our black-backed gulls, with a band of red on 

 their yellow beaks. There were also molly mauks, and a pretty gull 

 of a French-grey colour, with black wing-covers with white edges, 

 and brilliant red beak and legs. Besides the petrel and gulls there 

 were many kinds of divers and ducks, white-breasted shags, and 

 several varieties [sic] of penguins. The last only showed their heads 

 above water, as our cormorants sometimes do at home. Sometimes 

 schools of them leapt clean out of the water, making black-and- 

 white half circles in the air, popping in again with hardly a splash. 

 Such an island is a naturalist's paradise" — to reach which who would 

 not brave the stormy seas about the Horn ? 



The "Balaena" remained at Port Stanley until the 12th of 



