Lord Hozve Island . 
223 
wood and water ; and goats and hogs were soon introduced. 
In the early days of the Port Jackson settlement, when they 
were often hard up for food, they used to send to the island 
for turtles. White relates that the Supply on her return 
from her first voyage to Norfolk Island carried eighteen 
turtles from the island, the smallest of which did not weigh 
less than 150 pounds. The Palms, too, were soon much 
reduced in numbers, being destroyed for the sake of the 
terminal bud, or £ cabbage/ as it was commonly called, which 
was the only available vegetable. In 1833 or 1834 half 
a dozen persons settled on the island, but the occupation 
was not a permanent one. 
The first definite information respecting the flora was 
obtained by John MacGillivray and William Milne, naturalists 
to H. M. S .Herald, which ship first visited the island in 1853. 
The former was a zoologist, and the latter a gardener, who 
was an excellent collector but a very poor scholar, con- 
sequently his lengthy manuscript journal in the Kew library 
contains almost nothing worth transcribing. Both collected 
and dried plants and transmitted them to Kew; yet they 
failed to get the Palms and many of the other endemic 
plants. MacGillivray’s list comprises thirty-six species, and 
Milne's about sixty, including some cellular cryptogams. 
The vascular plants of these and later collectors are included 
in Bentham’s Flora Australiensis and Mueller’s Frag- 
menta Phytographiae Australis. MacGillivray contributed 
a short account of their stay in the island to Hooker's Kew 
Journal of Botany, from which it appears that there were then 
three families and two or three other persons living in the 
island. He noted the affinity of the flora with that of Norfolk 
Island and Australia ; also the absence of Coniferae, and the 
presence of dense forests of Palms. As his observations on 
the flora are the earliest made by any person possessing the 
least knowledge of botany, I make the following extract : — 
‘ Here and there is an occasional enormous Banyan-tree, 
with its singular root-like supporting stems, and some plants 
of a Pandanus , or ‘Tent-tree/ as it is here called. My old 
