89 
objects of our Australian collection, and our attempt was rewarded 
as richly as we could desire.” 
The next day “several whales passed very near our vessels. At 
midnight, we dredged again, and brought it up filled with a crowd 
of interesting objects, in describing and drawing which Lesueur and 
I worked all the rest of the night.” 
On May 31st they discovered Cape Naturaliste and entered 
Geographe Bay. Next day a considerable party landed, and it being 
low tide, Peron walked along the shore. “I quickly collected a 
fairly large number of new objects,” he says, “amongst which was a 
charming living species of Orbulites. 1 It is known that the 
Orbulites are a small kind of solid zoophytes, confounded, previous 
to the time of Lamarck, with the true Nummulites, and these singular 
animals were only previously known in the fossil state. This discovery 
is not the only one of its kind that we shall have occasion to relate 
in the course of this narrative, and the shores of New Holland will 
furnish us frequently with new proofs of the catastrophes of 
nature. 
“Crossing the dunes I came upon a marsh whose banks were 
everywhere covered with Salicornia, and on the brackish waters of 
which I saw several troops of black swans swimming with elegance. 
Having waded across the water (named the Yasse River) and 
struck into the forest he remarks: “The saline quality of the soil 
seems to repel all animals ; at least, I could see none, and the traces 
of kangaroos which I noticed in the sand, were very few. Insects 
even seemed exiled from these parts, always excepting ants, whose 
black legions, particularly on the slopes of the dunes, were every- 
where as innumerable as they were disagreeable. I recognised sev- 
eral new species among them, of which one, remarkable for its 
great size, closely resembles the Formica gulosa of Fabricius ; but 
the account of these animals will be treated more in detail in an- 
other part, of my works.” 
Unfortunately Peron did not live to write this portion of his 
work to which there are frequent references and which was evi- 
dently intended to be a Natural History of Australia. The scientific 
descriptions of all the new animals met with were to have been given 
in this volume and only the names of the more striking species are 
mentioned in the general account of the voyage, which was the only 
part completed. From this it results that almost all the new names 
given by Peron remain nomina nuda and cannot be referred with cer- 
tainty to the species to which he gave them. 
A storm coming on drove them out of Geographe Bay, and dur- 
ing the night the two ships became separated. The commander, 
Baudin, had arranged that Rottnest Island should be the first 
rendezvous and Sharks Bay the second, but for some unexplained 
reason he failed to call at Rottnest where he might have rejoined his 
consort, but went straight on to Sharks Bay. 
1 Orbitolites complanata, Lamk. 
