December 3, 1914] 



NATURE 



2>77 



boat, and required a smaller complement of officers 

 and men than a regular ship of war. It was com- 

 manded by Lieut. James Cook, and included Mr. 

 Joseph Banks, a gentleman " possessed of considerable 

 landed property in Lincolnshire, who although he had 

 received the education of a scholar, had long desired 

 to know more of nature than could be learned from 

 books," and who afterwards, as Sir Joseph Banks, 

 was for no fewer than forty-one years president of 

 the Royal Society; Dr. Solander, a Swedish botanist 

 and pupil of Linnaeus, who was attached to the newly 

 established British Museum, and who, along with two 

 accomplished draughtsmen and a secretary accom- 

 panied the expedition at Mr. Banks's expense; Mr. 

 Charles Green, one of the assistants of the Astronomer 

 Royal at Greenwich ; and other scientific observers. 

 These gentlemen, in the words of one of the bio- 

 graphers of Captain Cook, "quitted all the grati- 

 fications of polished society and engaged in a very 

 tedious, fatiguing, and hazardous navigation with the 

 laudable views of acquiring knowledge in general, of 

 promoting natural knowledge in particular, and of 

 contributing something to the improvement and the 

 happiness of the rude inhabitants of the earth." 



I would not be so bold as to suggest that the present 

 expedition has as high aims as those of its prede- 

 cessor, nor would it be fair to press too closely the 

 comparison between our present expedition and the 

 certainly more famous expedition of Captain Cook, 

 which first brought a ship-load of scientific men to 

 this then inhospitable shore. But whether we may 

 be lacking in quality or not as compared with the 

 members of that expedition, at least we make up for 

 it in quantity ; and where the first expedition found 

 nothing but rudeness and inhospitality on the part of 

 the inhabitants, the members of our txpedition have 

 met with all the signs of an enlightened civilisation 

 and have received the warmest and most hospitable 

 of welcomes. 



Could anyone authoritatively have foretold to Cap- 

 tain Cook and his companions what they were likely 

 to find here if they were to revisit this spot, after a 

 lapse of time which is after all measured only by 

 the lifetime of two individuals, how great would have 

 been their astonishment ! That a fine city of nearly a 

 hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants should be over- 

 looking the magnificent bay which they christened 

 "Moreton's," which is now traversed in every direc- 

 tion, independent of wind and tide, by huge, weird 

 vessels, where its solitude was then only relieved by 

 the presence of their own comparatively small sailing- 

 ship ; that some three hundred people, devoted to 

 science, should have faced the dangers and other in- 

 conveniences of the deep in order to meet and compare 

 notes with kindred spirits amongst the inhabitants of 

 the opposite side of the world ; and that large meetings 

 should assemble for the discussion of scientific 

 problems in magnificent halls, in places where the 

 members of the first expedition found no habitations 

 and none but the rudest of savages — these it must be 

 admitted are facts which would be calculated to sur- 

 prise the staid eighteenth-century men of science and 

 mariners brought by the Endeavour, who were still 

 in the habit of getting about quite satisfactorily to 

 themselves with only such aids to locomotion as nature 

 herself had provided, and who were not accustomed, 

 as we are, to hear of a first-class scientific discover}' 

 every month or so. 



Although I have spoken of the visit of Captain 

 Cook's expedition to this spot, it is well-known 

 that he did not actually land at Brisbane, nor did he 

 even ascertain the existence of the Brisbane River, 

 although we are told that it was inferred by some 

 members of the expedition, from the appearance of 



NO. 2353, VOL. 94] 



the sea water, that a considerable stream must open 

 into the bay. The wind was unfavourable for 

 approaching the land more closely, or, as Cook tells 

 us, he would certainly have made this the subject of a 

 special investigation. But even although you — i.e. 

 your predecessors in title — never had the chance of 

 seeing the famous seaman in the flesh, that is no 

 reason why his visit to your harbour should not be 

 adequately commemorated, and I venture to suggest 

 that the erection of a suitable memorial of so memor- 

 able an occasion as the visit to Moreton Bay in the 

 month of May, 1770, of Captain Cook and his com- 

 pany will — when the present troubles are over — be an 

 appropriate tribute to the deathless memory of the 

 most famous navigator that our race has produced. 



I have introduced the subject of Captain Cook's visit 

 because it serves as a convenient illustration of the 

 value to the world of the organised pursuit of any 

 branch of science, however abstract and however 

 removed from application to one's ordinary dail)' 

 avocations it may at the time appear. For be it re- 

 membered that this expedition in the Endeavour was 

 primarily intended for observing the transit of Venus 

 at Otaheite, and was fitted out by George IIL's 

 Government on the pressing representations of the 

 Royal Society. Incidentally, and after the primary 

 object had been carried out, the commander had in- 

 structions to make discoveries and surve\-s of the un- 

 known parts of the South Seas ; and the east coast 

 of New Holland was visited after several months had 

 been spent in cruising amongst the islands of the 

 Pacific and circumnavigating and incidentally survey- 

 ing the complicated coast line of New Zealand. Less 

 than a month after leaving Moreton Bay the En- 

 deavour struck a coral reef, and after being got off 

 proved to be damaged to so serious an extent that 

 but for a piece of rock having become broken off and 

 embedded in one of the largest holes made in her 

 bottom no amount of pumping could have kept her 

 afloat. This incident of the embedded rock, and the 

 fact that soon after she struck and whilst she was still 

 on the rock a dead calm supervened might naturally 

 have been regarded at the time as a special dispensa- 

 tion of Providence to preserve the expedition from 

 destruction, but the historiographer of the voyage 

 frankly admits that if Providence is to receive credit 

 for stopping the leak it should have its share of blame 

 for permitting the vessel to get on the rock at all. 



" It will perhaps be said," says Mr. Hawkesworth, 

 "that in particular instances evil necessarily results 

 from that constitution of things which is best upon 

 the whole, and that Providence occasionally interferes 

 and supplies the defects of the constitution in these 

 particulars; but this notion will appear not to be sup- 

 ported by those facts which are said to be providential ; 

 it will always be found that Providence interposes too 

 late, and only moderates the mischief which it might 

 have prevented. But who can suppose an extra- 

 ordinary interposition of Providence to supply par- 

 ticular defects in the constitution of nature who sees 

 those defects supplied but in part? It is true that 

 when the Endeavour was upon the rock off the coast 

 of New Holland the wind ceased and that otherwise 

 she must have been beaten to pieces; but either the 

 subsiding wind was a mere natural event or not; if 

 it was a natural event Providence is out of the ques- 

 tion, at least we can with no more propriety sav that 

 providentially the wind ceased, than that providentially 

 the sun rose in the morning. If it was not a mere 

 natural event, but produced by an extraordinary inter- 

 position, correcting the defect in the constitution of 

 nature, tending to mischief, it would lie upon us to 

 maintain the position ; to show why an extraordinary 

 interposition did not take place rather to prevent the 



