Chap, xxii.] S.MALLNESS OF THE KARTIl's SURFACE. 517 



Captain Maclear, rather crushed, he having discovered it with 

 his toe in the extremity of one of his boots. 



At Juan Fernandez a living young Fur-Seal, about two feet 

 in length, was taken on board. It followed us about crying like 

 a child to be fed, and was never happy unless it was being nursed 

 and petted. I tried to feed it with condensed milk, but it soon 

 died. When it was hungry, if blandishments did not succeed 

 in drawing attention at once to its wants, the animal, though so 

 young, became at once enraged and made determined efforts 

 to snarl and bite, with a view of enforcing its demands. 



At the same island a Kid, one of the'direct descendants of 

 Alexander Selkirk's Goats, also came on board, and learnt all 

 kinds of tricks on the homeward voyage. We should have 

 liked to have had a pet Monkey with us, but Monkeys are 

 strictly forbidden, by a special Admiralty regulation, on 

 surveying ships, because one once destroyed a valuable chart 

 which had just been completed with great labour. Even a 

 Marmoset, which I bought at Bahia, was considered to come 

 under the regulation, and perished in consequence. 



Concluding Remarks.— I did not suffer at all from the 

 confinement of ship life. It is wonderful how completely 

 practice enables a man so to modify his movements as to 

 perform with success, in a ship constantly in motion, even the 

 most delicate operations. The adjustments of the body to the 

 motion of the ship in ordinary weather, become, after a time, so 

 much a matter of habit as to be quite unconscious. I found no 

 difficulty in working with the microscope with the highest powers 

 (1,100 diameters), even when the ship was rolling heavily. 



There are many worries and distractions, such as letters and 

 newspapers, which are escaped in life on board ship, and the 

 constant leisure available for work and reading is extremely 

 enjoyable. I felt almost sorry to leave, at Spithead, my small 

 cabin, which measured only six feet by six, and return to the 

 more complicated relations of " shore-going " life, as the sailors 

 term it. I had lived in the cabin three years and a half and 

 had got to look upon it as a home. 



After a voyage all over the world, there is nothing which is 

 so much impressed upon the mind as the smallness of the 

 earth's surface. We are apt to regard certain animals as 

 fixed and stationary, and to contrast strongly with their con- 

 dition that of forms possessing powers of active locomotion. 

 In reality we are as securely fixed by the force of gravity as is 

 the Sea Anemone by its base ; we can only revolve as it were 

 at the end of our stalk, which we can lengthen or shorten only 

 for a few miles' distance. We live in the depths of the atmo- 

 sphere as deep sea animals live in the depths of the sea. We 



