r 



EQUIPMENT 47 



books : they are delighted we have lots of Cook's ^ and 

 Weddeirs.2 



As botanist [he writes in his Journal] my outfit from 

 Government consisted of about twenty-five reams of paper, 

 f three kinds — blotting, cartridge, and brown ; also two 

 otanising vascula and two of Mr. Ward's ^ invaluable cases 

 for bringing home plants alive, through latitudes of dii^erent 

 temperatures. I was further, through the kindness of my 

 friends [i.e., his father], equipped with Botanical books, 

 microscopes, etc., to the value of about £50, besides a few 

 volumes of Natural History and general literature. 



Thus Natural History came off very badly in the matter 

 of public equipment. Of this and his own work as a volunteer 

 in the neglected department of marine zoology he writes seventy 

 years later to Dr. Bruce of the Scotia expedition : 



It does not, I think, appear in the Narrative of the 

 Voyage that I was the sole worker of the tow-net, bringing 

 the captures daily to Eoss, and helping him with their 

 preservation, as well as drawing a great number of them 

 for him. 



Except some drying paper for plants I had not a single 

 instrument or book suppHed to me as a naturahst — all were 

 given to me by my father. I had, however, the use of Boss's 

 hbrary, and you may hardly credit it, but it is a fact that 

 not a single glass bottle was supplied for collecting purposes, 



^ James Cook (1728-79). His first great voyage in the Endeavour was 

 in 1768-71, when he was accompanied by Sir Joseph Banks ; the second, in 

 the Resolution and the Adventure, in 1772-5, when he was accompanied by 

 a stafi of naturalists, etc., headed by the two Forsters ; the third, in the 

 Resolution and the Discovery. 



* James Weddell (1787-1834) held the record for furthest south before 

 Ross. He was a common sailor of twenty-one when in a lucky hour his bullying 

 skipper handed him over to a man-of-war as a refractory subject. With 

 education he became a very competent officer, but being discharged at the 

 peace in 1816, took command of a Leith ship for a sealing voyage to the 

 newly discovered S. Shetlands. He did much exploration, surveyed the 

 S. Shetlands, and in February 1823, on his second voyage, reached 74" 15' S. lati- 

 tude in an ice -free sea. 



* Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868), medical man and botanist, was 

 the inventor, about 1827, of the Wardian case, in which growing plants can 

 be transported without watering through the extremes of heat or cold. By 

 its means the Chinese banana was taken from Chatsworth to the Pacific Islands ; 

 20,000 tea plants were taken by Robert Fortune from Shanghai to the Hima- 

 layas, and the cinchona introduced into India. 



