[114]. Enseigne de la Marine.
[115]. Cornets are a species of shell-fish. F.
[116]. Ouessant.
[117]. Raz (or rat, a race or whirlpool) is a place in the sea where there is some rapid and dangerous current, or where there are different tides. Such a rat is commonly to be met with in a strait or channel, but sometimes likewise in the high seas. See the Dictionnaire Militaire portatif, 12mo. 3 vols. 1758. Paris. F.
[118]. Enseigne de Vaisseau.
[119]. This bird is a native of the Isle of Banda, one of the Moluccas, and is called by the Dutch Kroon-Vogel. Mr. Loten presented one, some years ago, alive to the late princess royal of England and of Orange. Mr. Brisson, in his Ornithology, vol. i. p. 279. t. 26. f. 1. very improperly calls it a crowned Indian pheasant (Faisan couronné des Indes); and Mr. Buffon, in his Planches Enluminées, tab. 118. follows Brisson, though everyone will be convinced that it is a pigeon, at the very first examination of its bill. Mr. Edwards has described and figured it, p. 269. t. 338. of the third volume of his Gleanings. Its plumage is blue, or lead-coloured; the size, that of a turkey. In that noble repository of natural history and learning, the British Museum, there is a fine specimen of it. F.
[120]. They were found in a creek of the great isle, which forms this bay; and which for that reason has been called Hammer Island, (Isle aux Marteaux).
[121]. It is not known to what genus this plant belongs; a general, but not systematical, description of it may be found in Mr. Valmont de Bomare’s Dictionnaire d’ Histoire Naturelle, article Monbain. F.
[122]. M. de B. it seems can never sufficiently elevate the courage and perseverance of his countrymen; on all occasions he praises their disinterestedness, and endeavours to depreciate the merits of the British sailors, by balancing their sufferings with the rewards which an equitable government distributed to them. I have already said something on this subject in a note to our author’s Introduction (placed at the head of this work) and shall only add, that I should be apt to suspect M. de B. to envy the British circumnavigators those very rewards which he seems so much to despise, if I could combine such base sentiments with his otherwise generous way of thinking. F.
[123]. M. de Buffon has denied the existence of the Opossum or Didelphis, Linn. in East India, though Piso, Valentyn, and Le Brun have seen it in the Moluccas and in Java: M. de Buffon’s own countryman, M. de Bougainville, now likewise asserts their being upon Boero, in a manner so little equivocal, that there can be no doubt of the Opossum genus inhabiting the East Indies, though the particular species is unknown. F.