PART VII. 



COLLECTORS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



i. COLLECTORS. 



Philip Commerson, the botanist of Bougainville's French Exploring 

 Expedition, visited Magellan Strait in 1767-68, and gave to the scientific 

 world its first collection of the plants characteristic of the region. J. 

 Banks and D. Solander were the naturalists on Captain Cook's First 

 Voyage, 1 768-7 1 , and J. R. Foster and his son, G. Foster, and A. Sparr- 

 man, were on Cook's Second Voyage, 1772-75, which visited the Ant- 

 arctic regions and the Fuegian islands. Anderson on Cook's Third 

 Voyage, and Menzies, who was Surgeon and Naturalist on Vancouver's 

 Voyage, 1791, collected on the Pacific shores of Patagonia. 



After the episode of the Napoleonic wars the spirit of geographical and 

 scientific exploration revived primarily with the French, and afterwards 

 with the British. In 1817 Gaudichaud sailed under Admiral Freycinet 

 in two French corvettes on a scientific expedition to New Holland and 

 the East Indies. In course of their return by Cape Horn with valuable 

 botanical collections one of the ships was wrecked on a hidden rock. 

 Gaudichaud's plants, however, were ultimately saved from the wreck, and 

 were further enlarged by collections made on the Falkland Isles. Ad- 

 miral d'Urville afterwards visited these islands in another French ship 

 and increased Gaudichaud's discoveries. Dr. Eights, an American, also 

 landed on the South Shetland Isles, where he found Aira antarctica, the 

 most southern of flowering plants. In 1826-30 the Exploring Expedi- 

 tion under Captain King made further collections in Magellan Strait. 

 The interest in the natural history of the far south of the American Con- 

 tinent received a new impulse from the explorations and singularly bold 

 speculations of Charles Darwin, who went in his early manhood under 

 Captain Fitzroy as naturalist on board the Beagle, 1831-36. His inde- 

 fatigable industry and his observations during the voyage, and the charm- 



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