766 president's address. 



This man also described the mode in which they prepared 

 Macrozamia nuts for food, the principal thing necessary being 

 the maceration of the nuts in water for several days, and he said 

 that the arrowroot, which his master was then eating, was just 

 like the preparation which his mother used to make for him out 

 of these nuts when he was a boy. 



Banks tells us that Captain Cook's people were assured by the 

 natives that they ate the seeds of a plant, which appears to have 

 been Cycas media (a near relation of the Macrozamia), and that, 

 encouraged by this information, the officers ate some of them, 

 but, being ignorant of the necessity for maceration, they were 

 deterred from making a second experiment by a hearty fit of 

 vomiting. The hogs, which were still shorter of provisions than 

 the crew, ate these seeds heartily, and, about a week after, were 

 all taken extremely ill of indigestion and two died, the rest being- 

 saved with difficulty. 



For the first glimmerings of light upon the vegetation of 

 Australia (Sir Joseph Hooker says) we are indebted to Dampier, 

 who in 1688 visited Cygnet Bay. The genus Damjnera was 

 named in his honour. His herbarium was, till lately, if it is not 

 still, preserved at Oxford and contained 40 specimens, 18 of 

 which (9 being Australian) were figured in the account of his 

 voyage published in 1703, but both figures and descriptions are 

 exceedingly quaint and inartistic, and the names given to them 

 quite as crude and unintelligible. The specimens were worked 

 out by William Baxter, Curator of Oxford Botanical Garden, 

 between 1813 and 1851. 



The first scientific Australian botanists, who deserved that 

 designation, were the noble Sir Joseph Banks and his worthy 

 assistant, Dr. Solander, who were so delighted with the entirely 

 new, strange, and distinctive flora, which they discovered around 

 Cook's first landing-place, that they induced him to change his 

 name of " Stingray Bay " to " Botany Bay." 



Cook's expedition anchored on 28th April, 1770, and departed 

 only a week afterwards, in prosecution of its voyage along the 



