452 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



fur seal (ArdocepJiahis Falklandicus) wliicli he had found 

 lying close to the beach, and on one of these was a small 

 live Helix, which was afterwards unfortunately lost. One of 

 the crania was curiously nnsymmetrical, recalling that form of 

 asymmetry in the half-lop rabbit's skull to which Mr. Darwin 

 has directed attention, but of course dependent on a different 

 cause. 



On the 24th I landed with two of the officers, and leav- 

 ing them to cook mussels over a fire which they kindled on 

 the narrow strip of shingle which extended above high- 

 water mark, I started on a solitary walk, ascending one of 

 the steep hill-sides to a considerable height. About five 

 hundred feet up, I found a pretty little plant" with purple 

 flowers, the Ourisia hreviflora, for the first time. My progress 

 being at length arrested by a series of bare precipices im- 

 possible to scale, I gradually descended towards the beach. 

 In struggling through a dense thicket not far from the 

 water, my attention was suddenly roused, when stepping 

 from branch to branch of the trees, by a very strange sound 

 in my immediate neighbourhood, and looking down from my 

 perch, I saw a large otter running about, and gazing up at me, 

 apparently much perplexed by my unexpected presence. On 

 gaining the beach I found, close to the edge of it, some splen- 

 did bushes of Veronica decussata, some of them as mnch 

 as twelve feet in height, and covered with the pretty fragrant 

 white flowers. Fragments of Lithodes antarctica were lying 

 about, but with this exception, hardly any vestiges of marine 

 animals, save Mytili and Patellce, were to be seen. 



On the forenoon of the 25th, Christmas day, rain fell in 

 torrents, but by the "afternoon it faired, and a small party, of 

 which I formed one, landed, to collect some evergreens where- 

 with to celebrate the occasion — a sprig of JDesfontainea, 



