About a week ago we killed a seal. The skin and blubber were removed, but the balance of the carcass was left on the floe, about one hundred yards westward. This carcass has attracted great numbers of giant petrels. All the birds about except the penguins are scavengers, but the giant petrel is the king of all. We have had an excellent opportunity for the past few days to study these ugly creatures. In size they are about as large as a goose, but the spread of wing is greater and the body smaller. Their usual colour is sooty-brown with a grayish head. There is, however, considerable difference in colour; for they range from fawn to chocolate, and from black to a silvery gray; occasionally one sees an albino, and also some white, spotted with black feathers. In habits they are gluttons. Many of these about us now have eaten so much that they are unable to rise into the air, but sit on the ice with head and feet tucked into their rough, bushy feathers. If we approach them they run along a few hundred feet and then, if we persist in the chase, the birds vomit great quantities, after which they rise into the air and hover above us in a threatening manner. When we first entered the pack we thought, as did Captain Cook and other early navigators, that these huge, coarse, and ugly petrels were indicative of a nearness to land, but we have now abandoned this idea. The giant petrel is a pack animal, and seemingly prefers the pack-edge, where it can fish in the open leads and light upon the carcass of an occasional seal or penguin. We learned to like this bird for its noticeable, uncouth ugliness. It was, indeed, our most constant companion during the twelve long months following, while we were frozen to a piece of drifting ice. March 19.--The tempest still continues, but it is coming from the north in doleful wails, like the moans of a dying soul, which indicate that its force is nearly spent. The low, gray sky, the dead white of the ice, and the general monotone of neutral colours is still our cheerless outlook. We are indescribably tired of these seemingly ceaseless storms. It is not possible to work outside, and interior occupations fatigue us so much that we soon weary of regular work.