290 MEMOIR OF DR. HARVEY. 



to which he is attached as an amateur. He has contributed to 

 various periodicals, and has given authors much valuable infor- 

 mation as to the animals and plants seen in his travels. It was 

 he who procured the first living nautilus seen in England. 

 Books abound in every part of his house, and folios lie on 

 tables and chairs. I was very kindly received, and spent a 

 pleasant evening with him, chatting of fifty different things. 



May 9th. Moore took me a drive to the heads of Port Jackson, 

 to show me something of the bush. We went out by a road 

 bordering the marshes, where Sir Joseph Banks first botanised 

 here. I filled my collecting box with a few things, but not to 

 much profit. However, the day was a very pleasant one, and 

 may be marked with white. 



On another excursion, returning at dark through the woods, 

 we were attracted by a number of very luminous fungi, which 

 shed a broad glare of light among the grass and decayed leaves. 

 This light was very white, like ghostly moonlight, and so strong 

 that I could see the time on my watch. I gathered some, and 

 found them to be agarics (mushrooms) some inches in diameter, 

 with a flatfish, wavy, pale slate-coloured or whitish cup, very 

 numerous thickly-set decurrent gills, and a solid, curved, and 

 frequently eccentric stalk. I brought them home, and they 

 retained their lustre till decomposition set in. The light was 

 strongest when the fungus was in its best condition, and fully 

 grown. I have since found the same agarics abundant in other 

 places. 



One of the few curiosities at present displayed in the museum 

 at Sydney is in its way a strange one, which was dredged in the 

 harbour. It is a ginger-beer bottle, to the neck of which 

 several oysters have fastened themselves, and one has laid hold 

 of a tobacco-pipe, round which the shell has grown, and he holds 

 it in a knowing attitude, like any other gentleman. 



Dr. Bennett has been very kind, and insists on my becoming 

 his guest while I remain here. 



May 10th. Saw Mr. Boyce the missionary, and in a few words 

 arranged with him for a passage to the Fiji Islands, in the 

 schooner John Wesley, which belongs to the mission, and is 

 employed in carrying supplies and conveying the missionaries 

 from port to port and station to station. 



May 11th. Rode on horseback with Mr. Moore to Botany 



