CX1V ELOEA 01 TASMANIA. {Progress of Australian 



In 1791, Captain Vancouver's expedition, consisting of two ships, the 'Discovery' and 'Chat- 

 ham/ when on their voyage to north-west America, discovered King George's Sound. The expedition 

 was accompanied by Mr. A. Menzies, a zealous botanist, who formed a good collection at this port, 

 some of the plants of which appear in Brown's ' Prodromus.' 



In 1801, Captain Flinders's voyage, undertaken to complete the discovery of Terra Australis, was 

 commenced : and it was continued during the two succeeding years in the ' Investigator,' ' Porpoise,' 

 and ' Cumberland.' Owing to the late Robert Brown having accompanied this voyage, it proved, as 

 far as botany is concerned, the most important in its results ever undertaken, and hence marks an 

 epoch in the history of that' science. Brown united a thorough knowledge of the botany of his day, 

 with excellent powers of observation, consummate sagacity, an unerring memory, and indefatigable 

 zeal and industry as a collector and investigator ; he had further the advantage of being accompanied 

 by a botanical draughtsman, Ferdinand Bauer, who proved no less distinguished as a microscopic 

 observer than as an artist; and he had a gardener, Mr. Peter Good, to assist in the manual 

 operations of collecting and preserving. Hence, when we regard the interest and novelty of the field 

 of research, the rare combination of qualities in the botanist, and the advantages and facilities which 

 he enjoyed, we can easily understand why the botanical results should have been so incomparably 

 greater, not merely than those of any previous voyage, but than those of all similar voyages put 

 together. The ' Investigator ' reached King George's Sound in 1802, where Brown collected 500 

 species, and afterwards coasted along through Bass's Straits to Port Jackson. In July, 1802, the 

 northern survey was commenced, and that of the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the rotten state of 

 the ship obliged her captain to run to Timor, whence they returned by the west and south coast 

 again to Port Jackson. The ' Investigator' was here condemned, and Captain Flinders hired another 

 ship to sail for England, in which he took the duplicates of Brown's collections. Unfortunately this 

 vessel was wrecked on the Cato Beef, in lat. 23° S., but the Captain, and eventually the whole crew, 

 reached Port Jackson : the duplicate collections were of course lost. Brown and Bauer had mean- 

 while been left in New South Wales, where they explored the Blue Mountains ; and Brown also 

 visited the islands of Bass's Straits and Tasmania, where he resided for some months, at. Bisdon, on 

 the Derwent. 



Brown and Bauer finally returned to England in the ' Investigator,' arriving in 1805 with a 

 complete set of all their collections. On his return Brown was directed by the Board of Admiralty 

 to publish his plants, and the commencement appeared in 1810, as the 'Prodromus Florae Novae- 

 Hollandise,' and another contribution in 1814, as the Appendix to Captain Flinders's Voyage. The 

 first of these works, though a fragment, has for half a century maintained its reputation unimpugned, 

 of being the greatest botanical work that has ever appeared. 



Captain King's voyages come next under review, and owing to that able officer's own love of 

 natural history, and the encouragement he consequently gave to the botanist, Allan Cunningham, who 

 accompanied him, his surveys have been the means of adding very largely to our knowledge of the 

 vegetation especially of tropical Australia. As however the botanical interest of his expeditions 

 centres in Mr. Cunningham, who was even more celebrated as an inland explorer and Colonial 

 botanist than as the companion of Captain King, I shall include a notice of the principal points 

 touched at by Captain King in the following brief sketch of Cunningham's career.* 



Allan Cunningham (bom 1791) was, when a young man, engaged at Kew in the preparation of 



* Extracted from the interesting biographical memoir of Allan Cunningham, by B. Heward, Esq., E.L.S., 

 and published in the Journal of Botany, vol. iv. p. 231, and Lond. Journ. Bot. vol. i. p. 107. 



