As in the preceding work, the descriptions are short and unsatisfactory, and usually quite insufficient for the proper identification of the species. In the same year he also issued a little tract entitled "De Plantis Esculentis Insularum Oceani Australis Commentatio Botanica," which includes full descriptions and much curious information respecting the esculent plants, fifty-four in number, observed during the voyage, fourteen of which were from New Zealand. These three publications, together with a short essay, "De Plantis Magellanicis et Atlanticis," which contains no reference to New Zealand, appear to be the whole of the matter written by the Forsters respecting the botany of Cook's second voyage.
Cook's third and last voyage can be passed over with a few words. He left England on the 12th July, 1776, and after visiting the Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen's Island, and Tasmania, reached his favourite anchorage in Queen Charlotte Sound on the 12th February, 1777, this being his fifth visit to the locality. His stay was brief, and on the 25th February he finally left New Zealand. Cook's surgeon, Mr. W. Anderson, had some knowledge of natural history, and his description of Queen Charlotte Sound, printed in Hawkesworth's "Cook's Third Voyage" (Vol. i., p. 145), contains an excellent account of the vegetation. His collections, however, were small and unimportant.
In 1791, Captain Vancouver, in command of the "Discovery," accompanied by Captain Broughton in the "Chatham," visited Dusky Sound, making a stay of nearly three weeks. The surgeon to the expedition, Archibald Menzies, devoted himself to the higher cryptogams, and made a large collection of ferns, mosses, and Hepaticæ. Many of his specimens were figured by Sir W. J. Hooker in the "Musci Exotici" or "Icones Filicum," together with a few flowering-plants in the "Icones Plantarum." A set of his collections is in the British Museum Herbarium, and another at Kew.
The first of the French voyages of discovery to touch at New Zealand was that of Captain De Surville, in the "Saint Jean Baptiste." De Surville arrived off Doubtless Bay in December, 1769, only three days after Cook had passed the same locality on his way to the North Cape. He remained three weeks at anchor in Mongonui Harbour, and was most hospitably treated by the Maoris, a hospitality which he returned by burning one of their villages and destroying their canoes, apparently because he suspected them of stealing a boat which had accidentally got adrift. I cannot learn that any natural-history collections were made during this visit.
In 1772 an expedition consisting of two vessels, the "Mascarin" and the "Marquis de Castries," under the command of Marion du Fresne and Duclesmeur, arrived off Cape Egmont. Proceeding north-wards, and failing to find a harbour, the ships rounded the North Cape, and eventually anchored in the Bay of Islands, where a stay of over two months was made. Marion and his people were welcomed with
