HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. 33 



perfectly new departure was for the first time made in 

 equipping- and sending out expeditions, not as on 

 previous occasions by states and trading companies with 

 the object of material commercial profit, but great under- 

 takings for the furtherance of science, accompanied 

 by a staff of learned men. The tasks now set were to 

 determine the distribution of land and water in the less- 

 known regions of the globe, to investigate all new natural 

 phenomena, and especially to widen the knowledge of 

 the sciences of modern times, namely biology, ethno- 

 graphy and sociology. Something like a division of 

 labour was made between the English and French, 

 whose Governments alone sent out numerous expeditions ; 

 the English devoting their attention principally to the 

 surface of our earth and to new geographical discovery, 

 the French to the scientific investigation of new pheno- 

 mena. Meantime the French never relinquished the 

 thought of discovering the great southern continent, so 

 that we meet French vessels seeking Gonneville's country 

 in the Pacific and Indian Oceans at the very time that the 

 English Government fitted out its first great scientific 

 expedition. There were pre-eminently two French under- 

 takings by Marion and Kerguelen, otherwise unimportant, 

 that set out for southern waters in the year 1 77 1, and 

 both had the good fortune to find land there. 



Marion du Frezne, who originally was commissioned 

 to take back to his home a young native of Tahiti 

 brought to France by Bougainville, was first of all to 

 visit Bouvet's Cape Circoncision and then New Zealand. 

 He left Cape Town on the 20th of December, 1771, and 

 steered his course south. But he was unsuccessful in 

 finding either the apocryphal islands of Dina and Mars- 

 ween, or Cape Circoncision. As compensation he 

 discovered a new island on the 13th of January, 772, 

 which seemed to him also to be a portion of the great 

 Austral country. From this circumstance he named it 



