300 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



W.S.W. course. As we moved on very quietly, I devoted the 

 day to a most unpleasant task, the skinning of the King 

 penguin given me two days before. The mere process of 

 removing and cleaning the skin of so large and oily a bird 

 occupied so much time, that T had but little leisu.re to bestow 

 on its anatomy. One very curious point noticed, however, 

 was a very complex arrangement in connection with the tips 

 of the quills of the feathers. As a rule, the tip of each 

 feather (which projected on the inner side of the skin) was 

 provided with six whitish radii, probably formed of involun- 

 tary muscular fibre, and the base of the angle between each 

 radius was closed by another narrow band, so that each 

 feather formed the central point of a hexagon, and possessed 

 six muscular or ligamentous bands proper to itself and six com- 

 mon to the neighbouring feathers. The breadth of the scapulse 

 (fully an inch) was also very noteworthy. 



During the night the wind freshened ahead, while the baro- 

 meter fell, and by the morning of the 2d it was blowing hard 

 from the south-westward, and we steamed on our way very 

 uncomfortably. The 3d was a fine bright day, and the sea 

 had gone down considerably. The wind fell at about 11 A.M. 

 and then backed to the N.W. At 3.30 a.m. on the 4th Cape 

 Virgins was sighted, and we entered the Strait rather more 

 than an hour later, anchoring under the outer side of Dungeness 

 at half-past five a.m. It blew hard during all that day, and 

 throughout the 5th, 6th, and 7th, and we began heartily to 

 wish that we were done with this portion of the Strait, and 

 rejoiced in the prospect of going west later in the season, not 

 fully realising the unpleasantness of the almost perpetually 

 rainy weather which "we would there be called on to encounter. 

 Some fish were caught on the 6th, and among them several 

 individuals of a species which we had not previously obtained. 



