His work took shape in a mass of drawings and descriptions from the
dissection of the perishable marine organisms of the tropical seas,
and, yet more important, in the new classification he established upon
anatomical grounds. His first papers were sent to the Linnean Society
by Captain Stanley; the later and more important he sent himself to
Edward Forbes, the most interested and helpful of the biologists
to whom he had been introduced before he left England. To his angry
disappointment, no news of them, no acknowledgment even, reached him
on the other side of the world; it was not till he returned, after the
four years of his voyage, that he found they had been published by
the Royal Society, and had established his reputation as a first-rate
investigator. But, though with much difficulty the scientific
authorities enabled him to secure the promised Government grant for
his book, and a temporary billet ashore while he worked at it, he was
only able to publish his _Oceanic Hydrozoa_; a vast quantity of his
researches remained unpublished, and subsequent investigators, going
over the same ground, won the credit for them.

The other scientific interest strongly aroused on the voyage was
anthropology. The cruise of the _Rattlesnake_ provided one of the last
opportunities of visiting tribes who had never before seen a white
man. The young surgeon made a point of getting into touch with these
primitive people at Cape York, and in the islands off New Guinea.
He made a preliminary exploration through the uncharted bush of
Queensland with the ill-fated Kennedy, and all but accompanied him on
his disastrous journey to Cape York, when of all the party only two
were rescued, through the devotion of the faithful native guide. He
exchanged names, and therefore affinities, with a friendly native of
the Louisiades, and learned much at first hand as to their physical
and mental characteristics, which stimulated his subsequent