14 EXCURSIONS IN MADEIRA 



through the British islands and the continent, was returning full 

 of valuable information and sound reflection, enhanced by the 

 most amiable modesty, to relate all he had seen, heard, and 

 thought, to a venerable father, who had cheerfully toiled himself, 

 to afford a family of five sons, successively as they had finished 

 their studies, the same liberal indulgence, with equally hberal 

 means, by which my companion had so amply profited. When a 

 prudent man, more or less uneducated himself, not only devotes 

 a part of the savings of a Hfe of labour, but labours still, even in 

 the decline of hfe, to afford a large family of sons the pleasure and 

 advantage of extensive travel, of which he has been entirely 

 deprived, it marks a greatness of mind, more enviable and more 

 honourable than the liighest degree of cultivation. I never felt so 

 reluctant to part with an individual with whom I had so short an 

 acquaintance, as I did to part with this young man, who soon 

 found a vessel in which he might proceed to Teneriffe. 



The only fish we caught, were the coryphena hippuris, (which 

 the sailors dried and dressed, but found very oily at the extremi- 

 ties, and very dry in the middle) and a bream, which proved ex- 

 cellent eating, and answered to Pennant's description of the spams 

 brama of Linneeus, excepting, that it had only one row of very 

 small, fine teeth, and that it was one foot eight inches in length. 

 Both these fish were caught during a light breeze in latitude 34°, 

 longitude 10° W. The next day, we fell in with two immense 

 logs of American pine, w^hich the captain hove to for, and took 

 aboard. They were completely water-logged, and covered with a 

 continued mass of the kpas anatifera-, of the several hundreds, 

 which I had thus unexpectedly an opportunity of examining, there 

 was not one with more or less than five valves'. These logs were 

 also full of the te7xdo navalis, and a species not described by Cuvier, 



- ' Vide Cuvier, Regne Animal, vol. XL, p. 506. 



