Ixx INTRODUCTION. 



island. They next visited the port of Naos, on the isle of 

 Lancerota, where the vessel was to complete her cargo 

 with barilla, made from the Mesembrj'anthemum crystalli- 

 num. In the mean time, the two naturalists paid a visit to 

 the volcano, which, in 1750, almost entirely destroyed 

 twelve villages, and covered nearly the third part of the 

 island. Instead of one mouth the}'^ observed fifteen or 

 sixteen, extending in the same line about six English miles, 

 each havins formed a cone from three to four hundred feet 

 high. Across the middle of these mouths were large 

 fissures, exhaling aqueous vapours, which raised the ther- 

 mometer in a few moments to 180°. On the 27th October, 

 they re-embarked, and arrived at Portsmouth on the 8th 

 December. 



It was the intention of Dr. Smith to arrange his Flora 

 for publication, in London, and then return to his native 

 country : but on Sir Joseph Banks proposing the appoint- 

 ment of botanist, to an expedition then preparing to ex- 

 plore the Zaire, he most readily and unconditionally 

 accepted the same, from a pure love of science, and in the 

 hope of being useful to the world. His Journal, which is 

 now published precisely in the state it was found, is 

 suflftcient to evince his great zeal, and quahfications 

 as a botanist. It is but just however to the memory of 

 the deceased to stale, that this Journal had evidently un- 

 dergone no revision, but is a transcript or rather a trans- 

 lation of his original minutes and observations, as they 

 appear to have been entered, from day to day, in a 

 small pocket memorandum book ; written in the Danish 

 language, and in so small and illformed a character as 

 in some places to be perfectly illegible. By the close 



