4 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
notwithstanding, he was obliged to specially raise money to meet 
the expenses. He engaged, so we read, “ Zoffany the painter, three 
draughtsmen, two secretaries, and nine servants acquainted with the 
modes of preserving animals and plants.” The Comptroller of the 
Navy, however, succeeded in putting so many obstacles in Banks’s 
way that he withdrew in disgust from the project. Notwithstanding 
all this, Banks, to his everlasting credit, took great interest in the 
new adventure, and succeeded in getting Dr. John Reinold Forster, 
a man said to have been possessed “‘ of vast information in natural 
science, philosophy, and general literature,” and his son John George 
appointed naturalists to the expedition. 
This second voyage of Captain Cook was of special interest to the 
botany of New Zealand, since a portion of the real South Island vege- 
tation was investigated for the first time, for that of Queen Charlotte 
Sound, examined by Banks and Solander on the previous voyage, 
has closer affinities with that of the North Island. A lengthy stay 
was made at Dusky Sound in 1773, and Queen Charlotte Sound was 
revisited. Only 160 ferns and seed-plants were collected, a small 
gathering for areas so rich in plant-life as the area near the Marl- 
borough Sounds and the western fiords of Otago. 
The remains of Captain Cook’s hut at Dusky Sound still stand, 
and the spot was visited by the author some years ago. There nature 
is exactly as it was at the time of Cook’s visit. The same rich 
shrubbery marks the shore; kidney-ferns now, as then, clothe the 
forest-floor and climb up the southern-beech and taxad trees, from 
whose boughs, too, depend the long dark-green shoots of the 
pendulous club-moss (Lycopodium Billardiert). 
The elder Forster published an account of some of the plants 
in a work bearing the ponderous title, “‘Characteres Generum 
Plantarum quas in insulis Maris Australis collegit. J. R. Forster.” 
This was followed by a work by the son, “ Florulae Insularum 
Australium Prodromus,” a small book of 103 pages which gives 
descriptions in Latin of about 170 New Zealand plants; but these 
descriptions are altogether too short to be of any real use. 
Forstera, a small group of pretty alpine plants, keeps the name 
of the two Forsters green for New Zealand botanists. 
In 1791, Captain Vancouver, of Arctic fame, visited Dusky Sound, 
and in the dripping forests Mr. Archibald Menzies, the surgeon of 
the expedition, reaped an abundant harvest of the lower plants, 
