6 Baron Cuvier's Historical Ehge of 



We would remark here, that this period must be noted in 

 the history of science, as that at which natural history began to 

 extend its researches upon a large scale, by contracting an al- 

 liance with astronomy and navigation. It was also for the pur- 

 pose of observing the same transit of Venus, that the Empress 

 Catherine II. appointed the great expeditions into Siberia, un- 

 der the direction of Pallas, and during which valuable collec- 

 tions were made by numerous naturalists. At the same time, 

 Bougainville, by order of Louis XV., sailed round the world, 

 taking with him Commerson, a man of boundless activity, and 

 of almost universal knowledge. And it was truly in these three 

 enterprises, which were nearly contemporaneous, that govern- 

 ments learned by what point the sciences are connected, and how 

 the services which they confer are increased by combining their 

 investigations. 



I may be excused from relating, in detail, to the present au- 

 ditory, the events of this first voyage of Captain Cook. W^ho 

 is there among us that has not, from his childhood, read the ac- 

 count of it with a sort of delight ? Who has not trembled for 

 our travellers, when the cold threatened to chill them into a 

 fatal sleep among the snows of Terra del Fuego ? Who has 

 not wished to live for a short time, like them, in the midst of the 

 primitive people of Otaheite, — amid those beings so beautiful, so 

 mild, happy in their i^nnocence, enjoying, without disquietude, all 

 the pleasures that are to be found under a serene sky, and upon 

 a fertile soil ? Whose heart has not palpitated for the fate of 

 our navigators, when, having struck upon the coral rocks of 

 New Holland, they saw the planks of their vessel come asun- 

 der, one by one ; a leak opening which their pumps were unable 

 to subdue ; and when, after having no other prospect but death 

 before them, for two days, they were suddenly saved by the 

 expedient suggested by a man who was no mariner, of pushing, 

 from without, bundles of wool into the gaps of the vessel ? 



All the circumstances of this expedition, — the perils and plea- 

 sures of the navigators, the varied manners of the tribes among 

 which they landed, the caresses of the new Circes of Otaheite, the 

 combats with the cannibals of New Zealand, with the general con- 

 flagration of the grass, in which the inhabitants of New South 

 Wales were on the point of enveloping them,— seem to realise 



