uccess had been performed.

TASMANIA.

To this portion of Australasia I shall systematically apply the name of
Tasmania, in honour of that adventurous seaman who first added it to the
list of European discoveries. The same principle appears to have been
recently acted upon by the Government in creating the Bishopric of
Tasmania, and I may therefore plead high authority to sanction such
innovation:* higher perhaps than will be required by him who calls to
mind that hitherto the navigator who added this island, and the scarcely
less important ones of New Zealand to the empire of science, has been
left without a memorial, the most befitting and the most lasting that
universal gratitude can consecrate to individual desert. The insular
character of Tasmania was not fully ascertained till the year 1798, when
the intrepid Bass, then surgeon of H.M.S. Reliance, while on a whaleboat
cruise from Sydney, discovered the strait which bears his name.

(*Footnote. Mr. Greenough, late President of the Geological Society, in
his anniversary address to that body on the 24th of May, 1841, remarks
that, "It is much to be regretted that Government has not recognised
Tasmania as the name of that island, improperly denominated Van Diemen's
Land. The occurrence of a second Van Diemen's Land on the northern coast
of Australia occasions confusion; and since Tasman, not Van Diemen, was
the first discoverer of the island, it would be but just that whatever
honour the name confers should be given to the former navigator." Journal
of the Royal Geographical Society of London volume 11 1841 part 1.)

SOUTH-WEST CAPE.

Towards 10 A.M. steering East by South before a long rolling sea, we
passed about six miles from the South-west Cape of Tasmania. There was no
opportunity at the time of determining exactly the amount of error in the
position assigned to it in the present charts, but we were satisfied that
it was placed at least five miles too far south. The Maatzuyker Isles, a
group a few miles to the south-east of this cape, are also incorrectly
laid down. The view of this headland was of a very impressive and
remarkable character, and to add to the usual effect of its lonely and
solitary grandeur, a heavy sea still vexed and swelling from the
turbulence of the recent gale, was breaking in monotonous regularity
against its white and aged face; rising a thousand feet precipitously
above the level of the sea, and terminating in a peak, rendered yet m