The Plants indigenous around Sharks Bay and its vicinity, chiefly 
from collections of the Honorable John Forrest, C.M.G., F.L.S., 
F. R. G. S., Surveyor General of Western Australia, enumerated 
by Baron Ferd. von Mueller, K.C.M.G., M.D., Ph.D., F.R.S., 
F.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.G.S. 
It is now somewhat more than a fourth of a thousand years since the first ship 
furrowed the waters of Sharks Bay. It was the Dutch Captain Dirk Hartog, in the 
“ Endragt,” who anchored at the island bearing his name in 1616, as is well known 
from geographic literature, although that island was only settled less than 20 years ago. 
His countryman, Captain Vlamingh, touched at the same place in 1697, having just 
then discovered and named Swan River, Rottnest Island, and Garden Island, lasman, 
in 1644, came no further south on the western coast than near Dampier’s Archipelago; 
but in 1699, Captain Dampier reached also Sharks Bay, so named then by him, though 
priority is due to the Dutch appellation “ Dirk Hartog’s Bay.” From not much later time, 
dates the first scientific account of plants of this region, inasmuch as Woodward, partly 
in Dampier’s own work and partly in the “ Amaltheum of Plukenet, gave illustrations 
and brief notes on the species gathered at Sharks Bay ; but a portion of the collections, 
then already elucidated, came from the Archipelago which bears Dampier s name. 
On the suggestion of the writer of the present essay, Dampier s original collection of 
plants (40 species), still preserved in the Museum of Oxford University, was re- 
examined in 1873 by Professor Lawson, and the result promulgated in a paper read by 
him before the British Association held that year in Bradford. 
A fuller insight into the vegetation surrounding Sharks Bay was obtained 
through the second of the five French naval expeditions, sent out successively in search 
for tidings of Count LaPerouse and his officers and crew. This second expedition, 
commanded by Captain Baudin, visited Sharks Bay in the year 1803, when Leschenault 
seems to have formed also there considerable collections, which afforded material for 
some memoirs of Desfontaines, the then Director of the Jardin des Plantes of Pai’is. 
Furthermore, the elder De Candolle was able, from the botanical results of Baudin’s 
expedition, to render known some more of plants obtained at Sharks Bay, chiefly in 
the volumes of his “ Prodromus.” In 1818, the search-expedition under Captain 
Freycinet gave to Gaudichaud the opportunity of securing plants at various places of 
the “ Baie des chiens marins for an account of some of the species may be referred to 
Gaudichaud’s u Botanique, Voyage autour du Monde par Freycinet,” pp. 33-37, and 
occasionally pp. 407-487, several of the plants being also splendidly illustrated in the 
large atlas of that work. 
Three years later Captain (afterwards Admiral) Ph. P. King made a short stay 
during his fourth survey voyage at Sharks Bay ; also enabling Allan Cunningham to 
add somewhat to our knowledge of the vegetation there. In 1839 Captain (later Sir) 
G. Grey discovered the Gascoyne River ; but the disasters of that tragic expedition did 
not allow of scientific observations beyond those strictly geographical. Subsequently 
