able to take his departure direct for France; and on the 13th of November, 1820, he cast anchor in the port of Havre, after an absence of three years and two months, during which time he had sailed over 18,862 nautical miles. A few days after his return, Freycinet proceeded to Paris, suffering from a severe illness, and forwarded to the secretary of the Academy of Sciences the scientific records of the voyage, which made no less than thirty-one quarto volumes. At the same time, the naturalists attached to the expedition, MM. Quoy, Gaimard, and Gaudichaud, submitted the specimens which they had collected. Among these were four previously unknown species of mammiferous animals, forty-five of fishes, thirty of reptiles, besides rare kinds of molluscs, polypes, annelides, &c., &c. The rules of the French service required that Freycinet should be summoned before a council of war to answer for the loss of his ship. The trial terminated in a unanimous verdict of acquittal from all blame, the council expressing at the same time their hearty acknowledgment of the energy and ability displayed by the commander, approving, moreover, the skilful and careful measures he had taken to remedy the disastrous results of his shipwreck. A few days after, being received by the king, Louis XVIII., his Majesty, accompanying him to the door, said, "You entered here the captain of a frigate, you depart the captain of a ship of the line. Offer me no thanks; reply in the words used by Jean Bart to Louis XIV., 'Sire, you have done well!'" From that time Freycinet devoted himself entirely to the task of publishing the notes of his travels. The meagre account which has been given here will serve to show how extensive these notes were. But the extreme conscientiousness of the explorer prevented him from publishing anything which was not complete, and he was bent on placing his work in advance of the recognized boundaries of knowledge at that date. Even the mere classification of the vast quantity of material which he had collected during his voyage demanded a large expenditure of time. Thus it was that when surprised by death on the 18th of August, 1842, he had not put the last finishing touch to one of the most curious and novel divisions of his work, that relating to the languages of Oceania with special reference to that of the Marianne Islands.