AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF DR. W. STIMPSON, ZOOLOGIST. 145 
Venus gemma was very common. On returning to the ship a 
dredge-ful of the mud which forms the bottom of the harbor in 
8 — 12 ft. produced two singular spinous Holothuriae, a long-armed 
Ophiolepis, a Chetopterus, a common purple Astropecten and several 
worms and Amphipoda. 
In the evening, together with several of the officers, I went into 
one of the coves on a swimming excursion, and landed at a place 
where a fine sandy beach extended for half a mile between two 
rocky promontories. 
27th. This day was spent in the city of Sydney, which I found 
to bea large place of 60,000 inhabitants, and having fine buildings, 
the private residences even being built of sandstone. Through 
the kindness of Mr. Skead, one of the clerks of Mr. Clark, the 
American Consul, I visited the shop of Mr. Wilcox, natural history 
dealer, whom I found to be a man of information, and I spent 
several hours very agreeably in examining the curious forms of 
mammalia and birds peculiar to Australia, of which Mr. W. had a 
very full collection. He also showed me a number of species of 
oceanic birds of the southern hemisphere, described by Gould and 
others, by which [ find that the number of species is much greater 
in the Southern Ocean, than I had been led to suppose from what 
I saw on the passage. The English ship “Akbar,” which ship we 
spoke on the 24th Nov. in 60° E. Lon., arrived here to-day, we 
having beat her by one day. 
28th. To-day I went on a dredging excursion to the mouth of 
the harbor, with Mr. Wilcox, in my little sheet-iron boat the 
“Pollywog.” We visited the celebrated Trigonia locality, near 
the “‘Sow and Pigs,” and dredged, besides many living Trigoniz, 
some 30 or 40 more species of shells, very many crustaceans and 
a few annelides (see notes). One of the most curious animals 
obtained was a marine leech, with actions precisely like those of 
the common freshwater leeches from which it differed in its small 
size and the hardness of its papillated skin. This prize, however, 
* Wilcox, see these Proceedings, xil, p. 129. 
J—July 1, 1914, 
