70 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 
at which times he is veiy agreeable and my hom's pass quickly 
and pleasantly. 
The years pass ; but the same note is continued in a letter 
of April 20, 1843. Community of intellectual interests, no 
doubt, minimised the inevitable little rubs of months of close 
quarters in a saiHng-ship, frankly acknowledged by the young 
assistant surgeon. 
Our Captain is still always to me most kind and attentive, 
indeed his whole conduct to me, ever since we left, has been 
quite uniform, and I have an immense deal to thank him 
for ; as you may suppose, we have had one or two little tiffs, 
neither of us perhaps being helped by the best of tempers ; 
but nothing can exceed the liberality wdth which he has 
thrown open his cabin to me and made it my work room at 
no little inconvenience to himself. He is quite now the 
same to me as ever he was, and will be I doubt not to the 
end of the Expedition, so that my situation is most comfort- 
able, nor would I change with any ship in the service. 
But whatever his equitable claim in such circumstances 
he would not lay himself open to the charge of grasping at 
more than his due. 
Whenever the seine was shot I attended on the return 
of the boat, to pick out the fish that were wanted ; a very 
few I kept for myself and Kichardson^ should he not get 
them, but my duties of course precluded the possibility 
of my making any notes or a large private collection. 
Captain Ross often feels himself jammed between me and 
McCormick, when the latter wants to keep a nice thing for 
his government collection, and I of course want to put it 
with ours, for he makes no general collection of anything 
but rocks and birds, and as I take the drudgery of collecting 
all the other branches of Nat. Hist, with the Captain's 
assistance, it would not be fair that I should be refused 
the credit of bottling down the more scarce and beautiful. 
Whenever there is the slightest difficulty I always give up, 
remembering the proverb against ' those who wrestle with 
sweeps.' 
1 I.e. Sir John Richardson of Haslar, 
