WHERE COOK SAILED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

WHERE COOK SAILED.

WITH HIS BOTANISTS. PART I.

By L. M. CRANWELL, M.A., Botanist, Auckland Museum.

SCATTERED through Australian collections, as in New Zealand, one comes across precious packets of plants collected on Cook's voyages, while in Sydney, in the National Herbarium set in the delightful Botanical Gardens, one may even see one of Sir Joseph Banks' cabinets. The specimens themselves are dispersed through the vast general collections, but they are not forgotten; indeed, some people even beg for

scraps to be broken from tliem .as mementoes, and that is enough to make any botanist shudder. However, such demands do show that there is a very lively interest in the birth of botany in Australia. The same feeling drove me to seek out where Captain Cook had landed as soon as I reached Sydney, and so it was that I soon found myself at Kurnell, just two miles inside the southern head of Botany Bay, on a gently curving beach of light coloured sand where once upon a time only native Australian plants grew from shore to hill crest. Now, as at La Perouse, where the French landed later, there is a smooth sward of "bufifalo" grass, with magnificent Norfolk Island pines lending a touch of mystery to an old house hidden by them from the sea. Further back there is open forest on sandy soil, but we will enter it later.

Almost on the strand is a memorial to Forby Sutherland, a seaman from the Endeavour, and the first white man to die" in the new country. That was on May 2, 1770, about five days after the historic landing. Sutherland must rest peacefully enough where the wrack drifts in and the seabirds call. Away on the horizon is the tip of the mighty span of Sydney's bridge, while nearby is a large, very dignified memorial which concerns us more nearly. It

is of grey stone with yellow splashes of a salt-loving lichen found all over the world, and someone just before our arrival had placed a wreath at the base. On it are these words: — THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OP THE SWEDISH SCIENTIST DANIEL CARL SOLANDER WHO LANDED WITH CAPTAIN JAMES COOK AND JOSEF BANKS AT BOTANY BAY THE 2STH OF ' APRIL, 1770. Solander was the beloved pupil of Linnaeus, whose memory all Swedish people revere, whether or no they are scientists. It was Solander, as assistant to Banks, the great patron of science at that time, who devoted himself during this first voyage to the study of plants, collecting first in New Zealand and later along these Australian shores. Can you tell me of a monument to Solander in New Zealand t