July 26, 2010

Tuesday, 26 July 1910

Scott

Ilha Trindade, part of the Trindade and Martim Vaz archipelago, date unknown [1]

The Terra Nova put in at South Trinidad (now Ilha Trindade), an uninhabited volcanic island off the east coast of Brazil. Here several parties went ashore, the scientists to hunt specimens. "Cherry-Garrard and I took the birds," Wilson wrote in his diary, "Pennell and Bowers undertook insects and earthworms. Lillie undertook the botany and geology of which there was enough for everyone to observe what they could. Nelson with two or three helpers worked along the coral pools on the shore and caught many of the brightly coloured fish that lived there eating crabs." [2]

Edward W. Nelson and Denis G. Lillie were biologists, to be part of the shore and ship's parties respectively. Like most of the scientific staff, they were both from Cambridge. Lillie was deeply eccentric, believing for one that he had been a Persian or Roman in a previous existence, but despite this -- or perhaps because of it -- he was well-liked on the expedition.


Notes:

[1] Projecto Tamar - ICMBio.
[2] Edward Wilson, diary, 26 July, 1910, in Diary of the Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic, 1910-1912 (London : Blandford, c1972), p.27.

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