VICTORIA LAND 
267 
tinue at work for a few hours more in order to finish 
the job, for which of course they could expect neither 
pay nor privilege. This request was refused as it 
would have involved encroaching on the early hours of 
Sunday. 
During their stay at Hobart the officers of the expe- 
dition were received with the utmost hospitality by Sir 
John Franklin. The diary of Mr. McCormick shows 
that he dined every alternate Monday at Government 
House in order to take part in the meetings of the Tas- 
manian Natural History Society which were held there 
at the Governor’s invitation. This Society developed 
into the Royal Society of Tasmania, and the earliest 
paper communicated to it was the description of a fossil 
tree by Hooker. Balls, concerts, picnics and entertain- 
ments of every kind were lavished on the members of 
the expedition, who enjoyed to the full their last glimpse 
of civilisation before plunging into the unknown world 
of ice. Franklin assisted personally in the magnetic 
observations on the international term days, when it was 
necessary to enlist the aid of volunteers to carry on a 
double set of readings in the permanent and temporary 
observatories. 
News was received at Hobart which weighed heavily 
on the mind of the leader of the expedition. Notices in 
the Australian newspapers acquainted him with the 
doings of Dumont D’Urville’s ships in the previous year 
and the letter from Wilkes, to which reference has 
already been made, gave information as to the American 
discoveries in the very region to which the Erebus and 
Terror were bound in pursuance of the Admiralty in- 
structions. There is no doubt that Ross was very angry 
at being forestalled, though as we have seen Wilkes’s 
