1846 EQUIPMENT OF A SURVEYING SHIP 67 



January 1854 (vol. v.), in which, under the title of 

 " Science at Sea," Huxley reviewed the Voyage of the 

 " Rattlesnake " by Macgillivray, the naturalist to the 

 expedition, which had recently appeared. This book 

 gave very few descriptions of the incidents and life on 

 board, and so drew in many ways a colourless picture 

 of the expedition. This defect the reviewer sought 

 to remedy by giving extracts from the so-called " un- 

 published correspondence " of one of the officers 

 sketches apparently written for the occasion as well 

 as from an equally unpublished but more real journal 

 kept by the same hand. 



The description of the ship herself, of her in- 

 adequate equipment for the special purposes she 

 was to carry out, of the officers' quiet contempt of 

 scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's 

 influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises 

 of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty 

 to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the 

 spirit in which the Government of thirty years later 

 undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps 

 some vivid recollections of this voyage did something 

 to better the conditions under which the later in- 

 vestigators worked. 



Thus, p. 100 : 



In the year 1846, Captain Owen Stanley, a young and 

 zealous officer, of good report for his capabilities as a 

 scientific surveyor, was entrusted with the command of 

 the Rattlesnalce, a vessel of six-and-twenty guns, strong 

 and seaworthy, but one of that class unenviably dis- 



