46 RIO TO TERRA DEL FUEGO CHAP, III 
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 atime. 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.’ 
5th. 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 Wereides, 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. 
7th. 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 
ery, 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 equinoctialis? Linn. We 
could not discern whether or not their beaks were yellow. 
1 Macrocystis pyrifera, Ag. 
