Anniversary Address of the Limiean Society. 297 



to England in the beginning of 1789. In the following year he was 

 appointed in the capacity of naturalist, and with the rank of surgeon, 

 to accompany Captain Vancouver, on board the Discovery, in his cele- 

 brated voyage ; from which, after visiting King George's Sound on the 

 south coast of New Holland, a part of New Zealand, Otaheite and the 

 Sandwich Islands, and exploring by far the greater part of the north- * 

 west coast of America, he returned to England in the autumn of 1795. 

 During one of the visits made by this expedition to the Sandwich 

 Islands he ascended Wha-ra-rai and Mowna-roa, two of the principal 

 mountains of the island of Owhyhee, and determined their heights 

 (that of the latter exceeding 13,000 feet) by barometrical observations 

 made simultaneously with others on board the vessel. " Some account" 

 of his ascent of the former was subsequently given by him in the 1st 

 and 2nd volumes of Loudon's ' Magazine of Natural History.' From 

 an early period of the voyage Mr. Menzies added to his duties as na- 

 turalist those of surgeon of the Discovery, and it affords a striking 

 proof of his professional skill, that on so arduous a service and in so 

 protracted a voyage, not a single man was lost by disease after quitting 

 the Cape of Good Hope in their passage out. 



" From these various voyages Mr. Menzies brought back with him to 

 England large collections of natural history, chiefly botanical. A very 

 considerable number of the plants which he had collected, and especi- 

 ally of the Cryptogamous, to the study of which he was always devot- 

 edly attached, were new to science, and have been described from his 

 specimens by Sir James Edward Smith, Mr. Brown, Sir W. J. Hooker 

 and other botanical friends, among whom they were most liberally dis- 

 tributed. His own publications were few in number. In the 1st 

 volume of our ' Transactions' are contained " Description of three new 

 Animals [Echene'is lineata, Fascoila clavata, and Hirudo branchiata] found 

 in the Pacific Ocean" during his first voyage round the world : and in 

 the 4th, A new Arrangement of the Species of Polytrichum, with 

 some Emendations," which, together with an Appendix, afterwards 

 added, forms a valuable monograph of that extensive genus. In the 

 * Philosophical Transactions' for 1796, he gave, in conjunction with 

 Mr. (afterwards Sir Everard) Home, " A Description of the Anatomy 

 of the Sea-Otter," of which he had brought home a fine specimen, af- 

 terwards presented, with many other zoological specimens, and a set of 

 his plants, to the British Museum. 



" He subsequently served in the West Indies as surgeon of the Sans- 

 pareil, commanded by Lord Hugh Seymour ; but early in the present 



