and wheel in the air.  The whole region is a paradise for the naturalist.  Along the seaward side of the reef the great ocean surges and thunders perpetually.  Between it and the shore the quiet channel glows under the tropical skies.  It was amid such scenes as these that the Rattlesnake moved for nearly four years in the slow work of taking soundings, fixing the exact position of channels through the outer reef by slow triangular measurements, and generally preparing for the safety of the commerce of all nations.  The ship went first up to Port Curtis in Brisbane; then fetched back to Sydney.  Its next trip was south to the strait between Tasmania and Australia, then back to Sydney; then again along the Barrier Reef right up to the Torres Straits.  After work there, it returned again to Sydney, and then set out for the Louisiade Archipelago, which stretches through the coral sea south-eastward from New Guinea; then again to the Australian shores of the Torres Straits, and finally arrived in Sydney in March, 1850, where the Captain suddenly died, and the ship was ordered to return to England.

Throughout the voyage MacGillivray and Huxley busied themselves with collecting animals on sea and on shore.  MacGillivray seems to have taken for his share of the spoil chiefly such animals as provided shells or skins or skeletons suitable for handing over to museums.  Huxley occupied himself incessantly with dissecting tools and with the microscope, with results to be described in a later chapter.  The better equipped expeditions of modern times were provided with elaborate appliances for bringing up samples of living creatures from all depths of the floor of the ocean, and with complicated towing nets for securing the floating creatures of the surface of the seas.  The Rattlesnake naturalists had to content themselves with simple apparatus devised by themselves.  At an early period of the voyage attempts were made to take deep soundings, but no bottom was reached at a depth of two thousand four hundred fathoms, and their later work was confined to surface animals or to inshore dredging in shallow waters.  They began near Rio.

“None of the ship’s boats could be spared, so I [MacGillivray] hired one pulled by four negro slaves who, although strong, active fellows, had great objections to straining their backs at the oar, when the dredge was down.  No sieve having been supplied, we were obliged to sift the contents of the dredge through our hands—­a tedious and superficial mode of examination.  Two days after, Mr. Huxley and I set to work in Botafogo Bay, provided with a wire-gauze meat-cover and a curious machine for cleaning rice; these answered capitally as substitutes for sieves, and enabled us, by a thorough examination of the contents of the dredge, to detect some forty-five species of Mollusca and Radiata, some of which were new to science.”

By “new to science” MacGillivray meant no more than that the particular genera and species had not been captured before.  Huxley, by his anatomical work, showed many of the most familiar creatures in a light “new to science,” by revealing their true structure and relationships.