7 November 1768

Joseph Banks's Journal: Daily Entries

Table of Contents On this day ... 7 November 1768 Endeavour Voyage Maps James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia Transcript of Cook's Journal Sydney Parkinson's Journal The authorised published account of Cook's Voyage by John Hawkesworth 1768 Annotations Index Search Contact us Search for in Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine

7 November 1768 7. This morn at four no ground with 100 Fathoms of Line. About noon long ranges of a yellowish colour appeard upon the sea, many of them very large, one (the largest) might be a mile in lengh and 3 or 400 yards wide. The seamen in general affirmd roundly that they were the spawn of fishes and that they had often seen the same appearance before; upon taking up some of the water so coloured we found it to be causd by innumerable small atoms, each pointed at the end and of a yellowish colour, none of them above a quarter of a line in lengh; in the microscope they appeard to be fasciculi of small fibres interwove one within the other, not unlike the nidi of some Phryganeas which we call caddices. What they were or for what purposes designd we could not even guess, nor so much as distinguish whether their substance was animal or vegetable. [33] Voyaging Accounts © Derived from State Library of NSW 1998 Transcription of Banks's Endeavour Journal page (vol.1) 69, 2004 Published by kind permission of the Library https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/banks/17681107.html