345 



WILLIAM ANDEESON (11778) 

 AND THE PLANTS OF COOK'S THIRD VOYAGE. 



By James Britten, F.L.S. 



The history of the plants collected by Banks and Solander 

 dunng Cook's first voyage (1768-71) and by J. R. and G. Forster 

 during the second (1772-75) is sufficiently well known ; bu*t I do 

 not think any account has been given of those obtained during 

 the third voyage (1776-79). The collections then made were 

 comparatively small, and the additions to our knowledge of the 

 botany of the regions visited relatively unimportant ; yet the 

 specimens obtained, which, like those of the earlier voyages, are 

 in the Department of Botany of the British Museum, present 

 certain features of interest which may as well be placed on 

 record. The opportunity may also be taken to pay a tribute, too 

 long delayed," to William Anderson, to whom Cook was indebted 

 in great part for the information contained iu vols, i and ii of the 

 account of this Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784), and to whom 

 we owe all that was known of the flora of Kerguelen's Land, prior 

 to the visit of the Antarctic expedition in 1810. f 



I. — William Anderson. 



Of the early life of x\nderson we know nothing ; he was almost 

 certainly a Scotchman and educated in Edinburgh, but does not 

 seem to have taken a degree. The earliest reference we have to 

 him is that by Cook (o^. cit., i, 4) : 



"Mr. Anderson, my surgeon, who to skill in his immediate 

 profession added great proficiency in natural history, was as 

 willing as he was well qualified to describe everything in that 

 branch of science which should occur worthy of notice. As he 

 had already visited the South Sea Islands in the same ship [the 

 Besolution] , and been of singular service, by enabling me to 

 enrich my relation of that voyage with various useful remarks on 

 men and things, I reasonably expected to derive considerable 

 assistance from him in recording our new proceedings." A foot- 

 note states that the Otaheitan vocabulary and linguistic tables 

 contained in the account of the second voyage were furnished by 

 Anderson, who thus began the series of observations which he 

 later carried on with so much success. On this voyage he occupied 

 the position of surgeon's mate, but his name does not appear in 

 the lists of those on either ship, nor do I find it mentioned, even 

 incidentally, in the volumes containing the account of the voyage, 

 and it is absent from J. R. Forster's Observations made during 

 the Voyage (1778). The notes made by Anderson on the birds 

 observed during the voyage will be referred to later ; it would 

 appear that he collected plants, for Solander, who visited the 



* In so saying I am not overlooking Dr. Daydon Jackson's brief but 

 appreciative notice in Diet. Nat. Biogr. i, 393. 

 t J. D. Hooker, Fl. Antarctica, ii, 223. 



Journal of Botany. — Vol. 54. [December, 1916.] bb 



