318 
Bibliographical Notice. 
backwards and forwards for many years) as far out of position a s 
three and even nine miles, and this too in the dangerous neigh¬ 
bourhood of Banks’s Strait. A landsman has possibly no reason 
to fear that the future result of these inaccuracies will ever tend 
to embarrass his title, or to place him and his location three, or 
from that to nine miles out at sea, as the case may be; but the 
Tasmanian mariner, who has no fixity of tenure to protect him 
like his fellow-adventurer on dry land, may often have to realize 
the opposite alternative, and find himself as many miles too near 
the shore, embarrassed, perhaps, by difficulties enougli without 
the supervention of a treacherous companion in shape of an erro¬ 
neous chart issued from the British Admiralty. The authorities 
however, will be blamed by no one who has any idea of the 
extreme difficulty of avoiding the introduction of errors in the 
first instance, and of expunging them when once introduced 
What enterprixe, what patience, what days and nights of anxious 
vigilance, what mastery of mechanical and mathematical skill 
what profuse expenditure of means, such as British wealth alone 
can command, and British energy apply, must all be combined in 
the construction of one single line of the complicated details 0 f 
those charts which proceed from the Hydrographer’s Office. One 
of the most perplexing difficulties in the formation or amendment 
of a chart is the choice of authorities where they conflict. \y c 
have before us two charts of Tasmania. One was copied i n the 
year 1744, from a map inlaid upon the floor of the Stadt-house 
at Amsterdam. The other was issued by the British Admiralty 
in 1844, and is the newest thing of its kind. The only point of 
Tasmania in the former chart, ascertained by an actual observa¬ 
tion in situ , is a point in Frederik Hendrik Bay, south of Maria 
Island, which was fixed by Tasman in 1642. Yet who would 
have supposed that Tasman’s transient glimpse should prove, after 
the lapse of centuries, to have an error less in amount and less 
mischievous in tendency than that which appears in the chart of 
1844? Though generally ascribed to M. Flinders, the eastern 
coast of Tasmania in this chart would rather appear to be a rifac- 
ciamento of observations by D’Entrecasteaux, Furneaux, Cook, 
Baudin, and others. 
