Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/188

 88 AUSTRALIA 1787 which he had given the names Magellanica and Polynesia.* As de Brosses may be fairly credited with the authorship of Aurtraiasia. the term Australasia, there seems equal reason for attributing to Dalrymple the definite application of the name Australia to this country, although he gave a much more extended meaning to it in his work than we do now. The Histoire was published in 1756, fourteen years before DaJrymple's work appeared; consequently the two publications were in the hands of every French and English geographer of the time. Sr^'S'te"** That Hinders was well acquainted with the writings of the English geographer is evident from his work ; he quotes in his introduction, for instance, a paper translated by Dal- rymple, of which he says that it '^ furnishes more regular and authentic accounts of the eariy Dutch discoveries in the East than anything with which the public was before acquainted/' The paper referred to was ^' a copy of the instructions to Commodore Abel Jansz Tasman for his second voyage of Banks and discoverv." which had been procured from the Dutch the Dutch .., ^.-t ,-f^i explorers, authorities by Sir Joseph Banks. Although Flinders expressed his appreciation of the name which soon afterwards became an established title in geo- graphy, it is singular that he should have rejected it in most largely indebted for its commercial proaperity." According to the introduction to Cook's Third Voyage, it was owing to ** the creat sacacity and extensive reading of Mr. Dalrymple *' that Torres' track through the straits named after him was brought to light, the geographer having pointed it out in his Chart of Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean before 1764. Dalrymple was bom in 1737 and died in 1808. Among his numerous pro- ductions was an anonymous pamphlet, published in 1786, in which he attacked the proposal to found a c(Hony at Botany Bay ; post, p. 468. to the change of name from New Holland to Australia which had taken place **of late years," said:— "The change was, I believe, introduced by the celebrated French geographer, Malte Brun, who, in his division of the globe, gave the appellation of Austral-asia and Polynesia to the new dis- covered lands in the Southern Ocean." So far from introducing the name in q^uestion, Malte Brun endeavoured to suppress it in favour of his own inven- tion— Oceanica :— "The fifth part of the world will be called Oceanica, and its inhabitants Oceanians ; names which will supersede the unmeaning or inaccurate designations of Australasia, Notasia, Austral India, and Austraha." Nor was it Malte Brun, but de Brosses, who introduced the names of Aus- tralasia and Polynesia. The first volume of the OeographU UniverwUe appeared in 1810. Digitized by Google
 * Captain Sturt, alluding in the preface to his Two Expeditions, 1833,