taught the sailors the names of—­polycheats and sepunculids, I think he called them.  He caught various fishes, including sea-perches, garfish, coralfish, and an eel, a small octopus and a quantity of sponges.  Trigger-fish were so abundant that many of them were speared from the ship with the greatest of ease, and Rennick harpooned a couple from a boat with an ordinary dinner fork.  Lillie, who had recovered from measles, was all about, and his party went for flowering plants and lichens.  He climbed to the summit of the island—­2000 ft.—­and gave it as his opinion that the dead trees strewn all round the base of the island had been carried down with the volcanic debris from higher altitudes.  It was also his suggestion that the island had only recently risen, the trees which originally grew on the top of the island having died from unsuitable climate in the higher condition.  Gran went up with Lillie and took photographs.  “Birdie” Bowers and Wright were employed collecting insects, and, with those added by the rest of us, the day’s collection included all kinds of ants, cockroaches, grasshoppers, mayflies, a centipede, fifteen different species of spider, locusts, a cricket, woodlice, a parasite fly, a beetle, and a moth.  We failed to get any of the dragonflies seen, and, to the great sorrow of the crews who landed with us, missed capturing a most beautiful chestnut-coloured mouse with a fur tail.  Land crabs, a dirty yellow in colour, were found everywhere, the farther one went inland the bigger were the crabs.  The blue shore crabs were only to be seen near the sea or along the coast and water courses.  Several of these were brought off to the ship for Dr. Atkinson to play with, and he found nematodes in them, and parasites in the birds and fish.

During the afternoon a swell began to roll in the bay and those on board the ship hoisted the warning signal and fired a sound rocket to recall the scattered parties.  By 4.30 we had reassembled on the rocks where we had landed in the forenoon, but the rollers being fifteen feet high, it was obviously unwise to send off cameras and perishable gear, and since it was equally inadvisable to leave the whole party ashore without food and sufficient clothing and the prospect of an inhospitable island home for days, we all swam off one by one, the boat’s crew working a grassline bent to a lifebuoy.  The boat to which we swam was riding to a big anchor a hundred feet from the shore, just outside the surf.  There were a few sharks round the whaler, but they were shy and left us alone.  Rennick worked round the boat in a small Norwegian pram and scared them away.  Many trigger fish swallowed the thick vegetable oil which the boat’s crew ladled into the sea to keep the surf down, and I think this probably attracted the sharks, though it was not very nice to swim through.  None of us were any the worse for our romp ashore, but the long day and the hot sun tired us all out.  Nearly all the afterguard slept on the upper deck