330 SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION 
lections of land plants, land spiders, insects, and marine coastal 
animals were obtained. 
The collection of plants has been examined by Dr. O. Stapf 
of Kew Herbarium, and found to contain some thirteen species 
which have not hitherto been recorded from the island. South 
Trinidad is a small volcanic island lying about 500 miles from 
the coast of Brazil, whence it has derived its scanty fauna and 
flora by means of such agents as winds, ocean currents, and 
birds. On the voyage home we actually saw one of these agen- 
cies at work. When the ship was rather more than a hundred 
miles from the Brazilian coast, to the southward of Trinidad, a 
large number of moths, belonging to about four species, were 
blown on board by a S.W. wind. 
An up-to-date account of the fauna and flora of this island 
will be included in the Reports. 
NEw ZEALAND 
When the Terra Nova was engaged upon her three months’ 
surveying in the,neighbourhood of the Three Kings Islands, off 
the extreme north of New Zealand, some 80 samples of plankton 
and 32 samples of sea-water were obtained. 
Seven successful trawls in depths varying from 15 to 300 
fathoms yielded a good collection of benthos from this area. 
During the first winter the ship’s biologist spent five weeks 
at Mr. Cook’s whaling station near the Bay of Islands in the 
north of New Zealand; and in the second winter, through the 
kindness of Mr. L. S. Hasle, four months were spent on two 
Norwegian floating factories which were exploiting the same 
waters. Three species of whalebone whales were examined and 
found to be identical with the three northern species—Balenop- 
tera Sibbaldi, the Blue Whale; B. borealis, Rudolphi’s Rorqual; 
and Megaptera longimana, the Humpback Whale. About 30 
specimens of the last species were examined. An embryo 2% 
inches in length was obtained from a female humpback whale 
which weighed about 60 tons. 
While at the Bay of Islands an opportunity was taken of 
examining the inheritance of the pigment in several families of 
Maori-European half castes. Sufficient data were collected to 
