JULY 1770 ANT-HILLS—DRYING PLANTS 283 
all shifted, etc.; many were saved, but some were entirely 
spoiled. 
28th. We have ever since we have been here observed 
the nests of a kind of ant, much like the white ant in the 
East Indies, but to us perfectly harmless: they were always 
pyramidal, from a few inches to six feet in height, and very 
much resembled the Druidical monuments which I have seen 
in England. To-day we met with a large number of them of 
all sizes ranged in a small open place, which had a very 
pretty effect. Dr. Solander compared them to the runic 
stones on the plains of Upsala in Sweden; myself to all the 
smaller Druidical monuments I had seen. 
1st July. Our second lieutenant found the husk of a 
cocoanut full of barnacles cast up on the beach;* it had 
probably come from some island to windward. 
2nd. The wild plantain trees, though their fruit does not 
serve for food, are to us of a most material benefit. We 
made baskets of their stalks (a thing we had learned from 
the islanders), in which our plants, which would not other- 
wise keep, have remained fresh for two or three days; 
indeed, in a hot climate it is hardly practicable to manage 
without such baskets, which we call by the island name of 
papa mya. Our plants dry better in paper books than in 
sand, with the precaution that one person is entirely em- 
ployed in attending them. He shifts them all once a day, 
exposes the quires in which they are to the greatest heat of 
the sun, and at night covers them most carefully up from 
any damp, always being careful, also, not to bring them out 
too soon in the morning, or leave them out too late in the 
evening. 
3rd. The pinnace, which had been sent out yesterday in 
search of a passage, returned to-day, having found a way by 
which she passed most of the shoals that we could see, but 
not all. This passage was also to windward of us, so that 
we could only hope to get there by the assistance of a land 
breeze, of which we have had but one since we lay in the 
1 The absence of the cocoanut palm on the Australian coasts is one of the 
most singular facts in botanical geography. 
