we left New Zealand on May 22nd on our homeward passage. On July 5th
having passed to the eastward of Cape Horn we bore up for the Falkland
Islands, having taken forty-three days to traverse a direct distance of a
little more than 5000 miles. During this period the wind was usually
strong from the south-west, but on various occasions we experienced calms
and easterly winds, the latter varying between North-East and
South-South-East and at times blowing very hard with snow squalls. The
lowest temperature experienced by us off Cape Horn was on the day when we
doubled the Cape in latitude 57 degrees South when the minimum
temperature of the day was 21 and the maximum 26 degrees. This reminded
some of us that we had now passed through not less than 75 degrees of
temperature in the ship, the thermometer in the shade having indicated 96
degrees during a hot wind in Sydney harbour.

A passage such as ours, during which at one time we were further from
land than if placed in any other portion on the globe, must almost of
necessity be a monotonous one. We saw no land, not even an iceberg, and
very few vessels. For five or six successive evenings when in the
parallels of 40 and 41 degrees South between the meridians of 133 and 113
degrees West we enjoyed the fine sight of thousands of large Pyrosomae in
the water, each producing a greater body of light than I ever saw given
out by any other of the pelagic-luciferous mollusca or medusae. The
towing net was put over on several occasions but produced little or
nothing to repay Mr. Huxley for his trouble: so that even a naturalist
would here find his occupation gone were it not for the numbers of
oceanic birds daily met with, the observation of whose habits and
succession of occurrence served to fill up many a leisure hour. It being
the winter of the southern hemisphere, the members of the petrel family,
at other times so abundant in the South Pacific, were by no means so
numerous as I had expected to find them, and in the higher southern