in conjunction, and often assisted by another boat in charge of Mr. Heath, while the outside soundings devolved upon Lieutenant Yule in the tender.  The Rattlesnake in shifting from place to place, aided by boats in company, sounded the centre of the channel, usually following one of the lines run by Captain P.P.  King, and marked upon his charts.  The available boats permanently attached to the ship, were employed under various officers in the neighbourhood of the different anchorages, cutting up the ground, and filling up any gaps which might otherwise have been left in the new charts.

The summit of a very small rocky island, near the anchorage, named by Captain Stanley, Mound Islet, formed the first station.  Dunk Island, eight or nine miles in circumference, is well wooded—­it has two conspicuous peaks, one of which (the North-West one) is 857 feet in height.  Our excursions were confined to the vicinity of the watering place and the bay in which it is situated.  The shores are rocky on one side and sandy on the other, where a low point runs out to the westward.  At their junction, and under a sloping hill with large patches of brush, a small stream of fresh water, running out over the beach, furnished a supply for the ship, although the boats could approach the place closely only at high-water.

Among the most interesting objects of natural history, are two birds, one a new and handsome fly-catcher, Monarcha leucotis, the other a swallow, which Mr. Gould informs me is also an Indian species.  Great numbers of butterflies frequent the neighbourhood of the watering place—­one of these (Papilio urvillianus) is of great size and splendour, with dark purple wings, broadly margined with ultramarine, but from its habit of flying high among the trees I did not succeed in catching one.  An enormous spider, beautifully variegated with black and gold, is plentiful in the woods, watching for its prey in the centre of a large net stretched horizontally between the trees.

The seine was frequently hauled upon the beach with great success—­one evening, through its means, in addition to plenty of fish, no less than five kinds of star-fishes, and twelve of crustacea, several of which are quite new, were brought on shore.

Among the plants of the island the most important is a wild species of plantain or banana, afterwards found to range along the North-East coast and its islands as far as Cape York.  Here I saw for the first time a species of Sciadophyllum, one of the most singular trees of the eastern coastline of tropical Australia; a slender stem, about thirty feet in height, gives off a few branches with immense digitate dark and glossy leaves and long spike-like racemes of small scarlet flowers, a great resort for insects and insect-feeding birds.

COMMUNICATION WITH NATIVES STOPPED.