THE CHALLENGER 
35i 
which presented themselves were used to the full at the 
time and discussed in the completest way possible after- 
wards. 
The ship stopped at Prince Edward and Marion 
Islands and made a landing. There the naturalists ob- 
served for the first, and as it happened the only time 
during the cruise, the curious pouch-like arrangement of 
the skin on which the penguins carry their eggs or young, 
a feature which had led a mariner shipwrecked on the 
Crozets forty years before to compare the penguins to 
kangaroos. The next land to be explored was in the 
Crozets, but after bringing in the New Year, 1874, dodg- 
ing about in the fog off the inhospitable shores and vainly 
trying to find a sheltered landing, the attempt was 
abandoned. The ship pursued her way to Kerguelen 
Land running before a strong northwesterly wind which 
raised too much sea to allow of soundings being taken. 
On January 7th the Challenger anchored in Christmas 
Harbour, Kerguelen Land. Here a good deal of survey- 
ing was done, and three weeks spent in the harbour or 
cruising along the coast, for Captain Nares was charged 
with the selection of a suitable site for observing the 
transits of Venus in 1874 and 1882. 
The naturalists had a busy time in studying the fauna 
and flora of the island, while the officers whose tastes lay 
more in the direction of sport than science were no less 
absorbed by the ducks, penguins, and seals which 
abounded. American sealers were met at Kerguelen, 
where they still continued to work, whaling also in the 
neighbouring seas. One party stayed on Heard Island 
while the main body cruised from Kerguelen in small 
vessels, a larger ship communicating once a year with a 
Connecticut port. The importance of the whale fishery 
