APR. 1770 WORT FOR SCURVY 259 
this mess. It totally banished that troublesome costiveness 
which I believe most people are subject to when at sea. 
Whether or no this is a more beneficial method of administer- 
ing wort as a preventative than the common, must be left to 
the faculty, especially that excellent surgeon Mr. M‘Bride, 
whose ingenious treatise on the sea-scurvy can never be 
sufficiently commended. For my own part I should be 
inclined to believe that the salubrious qualities of the wort 
which arise from fermentation might in some degree at least 
be communicated to the wheat when thoroughly saturated 
with its particles, which would consequently acquire a virtue 
similar to that of fresh vegetables, the greatest resisters of 
sea-scurvy known. 
3rd. We got fast on to the westward, but the compass 
showed that the hearts of our people hanging that way 
caused a considerable north variation, which was sensibly 
felt by our navigators, who called it a current, as they do 
usually everything which makes their reckonings and 
observations disagree. 
5th. The captain told me that he had during this whole 
voyage observed that between the degrees of 40° and 37° 
south latitude the weather becomes suddenly milder in a 
very great degree, not only in the temperature of the air, 
but in the strength and frequency of gales of wind, which 
increase very much in going towards 40°, and decrease in 
the same proportion as you approach 37°. 
11th. Went out shooting and killed Diomedea exulans 
and impavida: saw D. profuga; Procellaria melanopus, velox, 
oceanica, vagabunda, and longipes; Nectris fuliginosa. Took 
up with dipping-net Mimus volutator, Medusa pelagica, 
Dagysa cornuta, Phyllodoce velella, and Holothuria obtusata, 
of which last an albatross that I had shot discharged a 
large quantity, incredible as it may appear that an animal 
should feed upon this blubber, whose innumerable stings 
give a much more acute pain to a hand which touches them 
than nettles. 
12th. I again went out in my small boat and shot much 
the same birds as yesterday: took up also chiefly the same 
