132 Bibliographical Notices. 



charge of temerity in making the several bold statements there 

 offered, unless I was prepared to give proof of all I had advanced : 

 a report of my observations upon the several genera of the Ola- 

 cacece, Hantalaceai, Aquifoliacea?, Loranthaceai, Styracea, &c., will 

 consequently be offered in succession, and the results of these 

 researches will at the same time be demonstrated by analytical 

 drawings. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, during the years 

 1846-50. By John MacGillivray, F.R.G.S., Naturalist to the 

 Expedition. 2 Vols. 8vo. London : T. and W. Boone, 1852. 



Those of our readers who possess a tolerably good map of Australia 

 and Torres' Straits will be readily able to comprehend the purpose of 

 the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake. We need hardly inform them 

 that the course of vessels bound from Sydney for the East Indies 

 lies northward and westward through Torres' Straits. If that part 

 of the Pacific which washes the eastern shores of New Holland were 

 like most seas, free from rocks and reefs within sight of land, the 

 problem of the mariner would be simple enough ; but, unfortunately, 

 it is not so. For a distance of from thirty to a hundred miles, a maze 

 of islands, reefs and shoals stretches from the coast and forms as it 

 were its advanced defences, terminating suddenly in the precipitous 

 wall of the Barrier Reef, which has to front the unbroken force of 

 the waves of the great South Sea. 



The navigator then may do one of two things : either he may 

 make his way through the labyrinth inside this Barrier Reef, or he 

 may commit himself to the unsheltered and fathomless sea outside it, 

 trusting to the accuracy of his observations for latitude to hit and 

 make his way through, one of its numerous openings. 



Each of these courses had its great dangers and difficulties. The 

 former, notwithstanding the demonstration of its practicability by 

 Capt. King, required a much more elaborate survey to be either safe 

 or convenient for merchant vessels and steamers. For the latter, 

 everything had been done that could be done, so far as an accurate 

 and careful marking out of the best passages through the reef was 

 concerned, by Capt. Blackwood and his officers in the ' Fly.' Sup- 

 posing, however, that in consequence of thick weather or the like, 

 a vessel missed the Raine's Islet passage, she would become involved 

 in the Coral Sea, which lies between the Louisiade Archipelago on 

 the east, New Guinea on the north, and Australia on the west ; — an 

 unsurveyed and almost unexamined district, which there was every 

 reason for believing to be full of hidden dangers, and yet which must 

 be traversed in order to reach Bligh's Entrance (or the northern ter- 

 mination of the Barrier Reef), round which lay the only access to 

 Torres' Straits. 



The hydrographic duties which the • Rattlesnake ' was commis- 



