originally called Stingray, but afterwards Botany Bay, was not so named on account of the fertility of the soil, but from the variety of plants new to the science of botany which were discovered on a soil otherwise rather unpromising. It is plain that early navigators would assign such a designation as "Côte des Herbages" to a shore remarkable for its rich growth of grass or other vegetation, rather than from the appreciation of any curious botanical discovery. Had the similarity of the names "Rivière de beaucoup d'Isles" and "Côte dangereuse" with Cook's "Bay of Isles" and the place "where the Endeavour struck," names descriptive of unquestionable realities, been advanced by Dalrymple as evidence of the high probability that the country represented on the early map was New Holland, without volunteering an insinuation against the merit of his rival, we should have accepted the reasonable suggestion with deference and just acquiescence.
That New Holland was the country thus represented, became an argument supported by a variety of reasonings by more than one of our French neighbours. Mr. Coquebert Montbret, in a memoir printed in No. 81 of the Bulletin des Sciences, 1804, quotes Dalrymple's injurious observation, and silently allows it to have its deceptive effect on the mind of the incautious reader.
The atlas now in the possession of Sir Thomas Phillipps, which, as we have stated, is probably next in date to that made for the Dauphin, fell into the possession of Prince Talleyrand at the beginning of
