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.

Soon after the ship had come to an anchor, some natives came off in their
canoes and paid us a visit, bringing with them a quantity of shellfish
(Sanguinolaria rugosa) which they eagerly exchanged for biscuit. For a
few days afterwards we occasionally met them on the beach, but at length
they disappeared altogether, in consequence of having been fired at with
shot by one of two of the young gentlemen of the Bramble, on a shooting
excursion, whom they wished to prevent from approaching too closely a
small village, where they had their wives and children. Immediate steps
were taken, in consequence, to prevent the recurrence of such collisions,
when thoughtless curiosity on one side is apt to be promptly resented on
the other, if numerically superior in force. I saw nothing in the
appearance of these natives to distinguish them from those of Goold
Island, and the canoes are the same. The men had large prominent
cicatrices on the shoulders, and across the breast and belly, the septum
of the nose was perforated, and none of the teeth had been removed. I saw
no weapons, and some rude armlets were their only ornaments.

THE BARNARD ISLES.

On June 6th we ran to the northward 15 1/2 miles, and anchored at noon
under Number 3 of the Barnard Isles, a group consisting of six high rocky
wooded isles, the two southernmost of which