Recherches Archipelago.] TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
81 
zamia (Zamia spiralis of Brown's Prodr. flor. Nov. Holl. I, 348) ; a 1802. 
class of plants nearly allied to the third kind of palm found by cap- S un!layTo. 
tain Cook on the East Coast, the fruit of which produced the same 
deleterious effects on board the Endeavour.* 
The weather, unfortunately for my bearings, was so hazy, 
that unless objects were eminently conspicuous, they could not be 
distinguished beyond four or five leagues. My list, however, con- 
tained forty-five islands and clusters of rocks, independently of many 
patches of breakers where nothing above water appeared; yet 
most of those in the western part of the archipelago were in- 
visible, either from their distance, or from being hidden by other 
lands. 
In turning from the view of these complicated dangers to that 
of the interior country, the prospect was but little improved. Sand 
and stone, with the slightest covering of vegetation, every where 
presented themselves on the lower lands ; and the many shining 
parts on the sides of the hills, showed them to be still more bare. 
The vegetation, indeed, consisted of an abundant variety of shrubs 
and small plants, and yielded a delightful harvest to the botanists ; 
but to the herdsman and cultivator it promised nothing : not a blade 
of grass, nor a square yard of soil from which the seed delivered to 
it could be expected back, was perceivable by the eye in its course 
over these arid plains. 
Upon a rock on the side of the hill I found a large nest, very 
similar to those seen in King George's Sound. There were in it 
several masses resembling those which contain the hair and bones 
of mice, and are disgorged by the owls in England after the flesh is 
digested. These masses were larger, and consisted of the hair of 
seals and of land animals, of the scaly feathers of pinguins, and the 
bones of birds and small quadrupeds. Possibly the constructor of 
the nest might be an enormous owl ; and if so, the cause of the bird 
being never seen, whilst the nests were not scarce, would be from 
* Hawkesworth, Vol. III. p. 220, 221. 
