a ee ee ee a eI emer em mmnetey 
Miscellanies. - : 207 
that port in the spring of 1838, the ships will make for the Polyne- 
sian Islands; and, on arriving at Vavaoo, M. d’Urville will employ 
the first part of June in completing, by new observations, the work 
executed, in 1827, by the officers of the Astrolabe. The vessels 
will then visit Banks’s Islands, to the north of the New Hebrides, 
which are hardly known, and Van Icoro, where, however, they: go 
merely to visit the cenotaph erected to the memory of La Pérouse, 
and to obtain further information from the natives. ‘Thence M. 
d’Urville will steer towards the Solomon Isles; and, if the condition 
of the vessels permit, he will proceed through Torres Straits, and 
visit the new Dutch colony, on the river Dourga, the Isles of Aroo 
and Key, and then go to Amboina. From Amboina the Zélée will 
be sent back to France, so that she will return a year before the 4s- 
trolabe, and will bring home the collections already made, and the 
result of the operations performed. ‘The Astrolabe alone will then 
sail round New Holland, and will visit, about November or Decem- 
ber, 1838, the colony at Swan River. Hence she will proceed to 
Hobart Town, and then sail to New Zealand. The months of Feb- 
ruary and March, 1839, will be devoted to important operations in that 
great island, especially in carefully exploring certain parts of Cook’s 
Straits, which may afford valuable resources to English whalers. She 
will then visit the Chatham Isles, respecting which we have had no 
information since their discovery by Broughton in 1791. Then, 
steering to the north, M. d’Urville will pass two or three months 
among the Carolines; and about August he hopes to arrive at Min- 
danao, where no French ship, it is said, has ever touched; after 
which, he will visit some parts of the island of Borneo, pay a short 
visit to Batavia, touch at one or other of the ports of Sumatra, and 
return by the Cape of Good Hope to France, where he expects to 
arrive about March or April, 1840, after an absence of thirty or thirty 
two months. It is unnecessary to point out the interest which attaches 
to an expedition conceived on so large a scale, and calculated to pro- 
duce very important results. Two vessels, perfectly well equipped, 
and commanded by officers accustomed to surmount the difficulties 
of voyages of discovery, hold out very reasonable prospects of success 
in such an enterprise.—Atheneum, April, 1837. 
23. Greece.—A society of Natural History has been established 
in Athens. It was addressed at its first meeting by M. Nicolaides 
Levadiefs, a medical officer under the Greek government. After 
