142 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE 



sister, ' allowing brotherly affection to outweigh patriotism,' 

 was strictly speaking a contravention of rules, which, if it 

 reached official ears, might get him into hot water with his 

 commander. The young officers, securing spare specimens 

 for themselves siib rosa, were occasionally hard put to it to 

 escape detection. 



The Captain [he writes to his father on November 25, 

 1842] has a noble collection of Birds in casks, — a most noble 

 one. I do not let him know that I skin any at all, for he 

 is a capital specimen himself of a Naturalist, no more do 

 Smith or Oakeley, and you would laugh to see us playing 

 bopeep along the deck as he comes along, for he has an eye 

 like a hawk, and the moment he suspects, —the sooner you 

 give up with a good grace the better. I had a narrow 

 escape the other day with a noble Maccaroni Penguin with 

 gold feathers and crest, by jumping down the main hatch 

 as he came up the after one. 



The spare sets of specimens for his father had to pass 

 officially through the hands of the Admiralty and the British 

 Museum ; but at the Museum, Kobert Brown was * better 

 than thfe regulations,' and facilitated Sir William's exanfination 

 of the plants. 



Hence, accordingly, the urgent tone of the following passages 

 from a letter to Sir William (December 5, 1842), though lightened 

 by a reference to Boss's epistolary anxieties which, as will be 

 seen later, very nearly chanced on the explanation. 



There is another subject which annoys me exceedingly, 

 and is the only one in the course of the Expedition which 

 does : it is the following passage in a letter from my mother 

 dated August 1 : 



* . . . Your drawings (you need not tell Captain Boss, 

 unless he would like to hear it) are known far and wide.' 



I thought in my letters I explained my wishes on that sub- 

 ject fully to you all, so much so that I feared to trouble you 

 too often by positive desire that they should be known but 

 to few, and as to ' unless Captain Boss would like to hear it,' 

 I surely have said often enough, or at least given it fully to 

 be understood, that I had no business whatever to send 



