To ourselves the change was agreeable; instead of the monotonous gumtrees and mangroves of Port Curtis and the scantily wooded stony hills of the Percy Isles, we had here many varieties of woodland vegetation, including some large patches of dense brush or jungle, in which one might observe every shade of green from the sombre hue of the pine, to the pale green of the cabbage-palm.
Some rare birds were procured in the brushes--two of them appear here to attain their southern limits of distribution upon the north-east coast of Australia; they are the Australian sunbird (Cinnyris australis) reminding one of the humming birds from its rich metallic colouring, and the Megapodius tumulus, a rasorial bird, the size of a fowl, which constructs great mounds of earth, leaves, sticks, stones, and coral, in which the eggs are deposited at a depth of several feet from the surface, and left there to be hatched by the heat of the fermenting mass of vegetable matter.

In addition to these, our sportsmen were successful in procuring numbers of the pheasant-tailed pigeon, and the brush-turkey (Talegalla lathami) the latter much esteemed, from the goodness of its flesh.

Many plants and insects as well as several landshells, new to science, which will elsewhere be alluded to, were added to the collection.

Doubtless fish are also plentiful here, but we were prevented from hauling the seine by the remains of a wreck in the centre of a flat of muddy sand at the head of the bay where we were anchored; the vessel, I have since heard, had come in contact with a coral reef, and been run on shore here, in order to save a portion of her stores.
CAPE UPSTART.

FIND NO WATER.
December 10th.
In company with the Asp we ran up to the northward to Cape Upstart, a distance of about ninety miles, and anchored in five fathoms off the sandy beach inside the point.