Account of the Tetragonia, or New Zealand Spinach. 489 



who tasted it. Last winter, Lord Essex brought some of 

 the seeds from Paris, which I raised, and their produce has 

 been continually used at Cassiobury through the summer, and 

 up to the present time. 



Our first knowledge of this plant was derived from Sir 

 Joseph Banks, who discovered it in the beginning of the 

 year 1770, at Queen Charlotte's Sound, in New Zealand, 

 when with Captain Cook, in his first voyage round the world. 

 In the account of that voyage, edited by Dr. Hawkes- 

 worth,* it is mentioned amongst the plants of New Zealand 

 as having been met with once or twice, " and resembling the 

 plant called by country people, Lamb's Quarters,f or Fat 

 Hen, it was boiled and eaten instead of greens." Specimens 

 and seeds were brought to England, and its introduction by 

 Sir Joseph Banks to Kew Gardens is recorded^ to have 

 taken place in 1772. In the sketches made of the plant in the 

 voyage, which are preserved in the Banksian Library, it is 

 called Tetragonia cornuta, and G^rtner,§ who had received 

 specimens from the Banksian Herbarium, with this its original 

 name, gave it that appellation when he figured its fruit. It re- 

 ceived its present name from Professor Murray of Gottingen, 

 who having obtained the seed, without a knowledge of the his- 

 tory of the plant, published in 1783|| a description and figure 

 of it, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Gottingen, as 

 a new plant ; he afterwards ascertained that it was the same 



* Hawkesworth's Voyages, volume iii. page 442, 

 t Chenopodium album, Eng. Bot. plate 1724. 



X Hortus Kewensis, lit edition, volume ii. page 178, — 2nd edition, volume iii. 

 page 211. § Ga?rtner, Fruct. vol. ii. page 483, plate 179, fig. 3. 



|| Murray in Comment. Gott. 1783, page 13, plate 5. 



