46 RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO CHAP, in 



lobsters, which have been seen by almost every one passing 

 through these seas ; they were, however, so far from colouring 

 the sea red, as Dampier and Cowley say they do, that I may 

 affirm that we never saw more than a few hundreds of them 

 at a time. We called them Cancer gregarius. 



3rd. This evening many large bunches of seaweed floated 

 by the ship, and we caught some of it with hooks. It was 

 of immense size, every leaf four feet long, and the stalk 

 about twelve. The footstalk of each leaf was swelled into 

 a long air-vessel. Mr. Gore tells me that he has seen this 

 weed grow quite to the top of the water in twelve fathoms ; 

 if so, the swelled footstalks are probably the trumpet-grass 

 or weed of the Cape of Good Hope. We described it, how- 

 ever, as it appeared, and called it Fucus giganteus. 1 



6th. In some of the water taken up we observed a 

 small and very nimble insect of a conical figure, which 

 moved with a kind of whorl of legs or tentacula round the 

 base of the cone. We could not find any Nereides, or 

 indeed any other insect than this, in the water, but were 

 not able to prove that he was the cause of the lightness of 

 the water, which was much observed hereabouts, so we 

 deferred our observations on the animal until the morning. 



*Iih. We now for the first time saw some of the birds 

 called penguins by the southern navigators : they seem much 

 of the size and not unlike Alca pica, but are easily known 

 by streaks upon their faces and their remarkably shrill 

 cry, different from that of any sea-bird I am acquainted 

 with. We saw also several seals, but much smaller than 

 those I have seen in Newfoundland, and black ; they gener- 

 ally appeared in lively action, leaping out of the water 

 like porpoises, so much so that some of our people were 

 deceived by them, mistaking them for fish. 



During a gale which had lasted yesterday and to-day 

 we observed vast numbers of birds about us. Procellarice 

 of all kinds we have before mentioned ; gray ones and 

 another kind, all black, Procellaria cequinoctialis ? Linn. We 

 could not discern whether or not their beaks were yellow. 



1 Macrocystis pyrifera, Ag. 



