6 
The Queensland Naturalist 
March, 1929' 
NOTES ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOW 
ISLAND, THE HOME OF THE BARRIEF REEF 
SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION. 
By J. E. Young. 
(Presidential Address delivered before the Queensland 
Naturalists’ Club, 18th February, 1929.) 
Now that Low Island has become so widely known as 
the scene of operations, or perhaps I should say, of in- 
vestigations of the Great Barrier Reef Expedition, it may 
not be out of place to give some little description of it, 
and to mention some of the more noticeable features of 
its natural history, most of the reports so far having been 
devoted to the activities of members of the party at pre- 
sent domiciled there. 
The first mention we have of the Island is by 
Captain James Cook, who, accompanied by the famous 
botanist, afterwards Sir Joseph Banks, and by Dr. 
Solander, a Swedish Botanist attached to the British 
Museum, passed it in 1770, on the morning of the very 
day on which he came to grief on Endeavour Reef. 
Leaving the entrance to what is now known as Mis- 
sion Bay, just outside the present Cairns, at 4 a.m., on 
June 10, he says: “We continued steering N.N.W.-JW. as 
the land lay ... At ten we hauled off North in order to 
get without a small low island, which lay at about two 
leagues’ distance from the main, and a great part of 
which, at this time, it being high water, was overflowed. 
At three leagues to the N.W. of thjs island, clo-se under 
the main land, is another island, the land of which rises 
to a greater height, and which at noon bore from us 
X.ofAV. distant 7 or 8 miles. At this time our latitude 
was 16 deg. 20 min. S. Cape Grafton bore S.29E. distant 
40 miles.” 
All these statements indicate without doubt that the 
small low island was the one now named Low Island, and 
the second one corresponds with Snapper Island in de- 
scription and latitude. 
Continuing northward, Cook apparently sighted 
Hope Islands about 6 in the evening, and grounded on 
Ihe reef just before 11 that night. I mention these points 
al length as an article in a current magazine evidently 
gives an incorrect quotation from Captain Cook’s log re- 
garding the island. 
