The discussion at Dijon was more fruitful in results than such colloquies usually are. De Brosses was especially struck with the utility of exploration in southern seas, and considered that the French nation should take the lead in such an endeavour. He spoke for a full hour in support of this particular suggestion of Maupertuis, and when he had finished his fellow-members assured him that what he had advanced was so novel and interesting that he would do well to expand his ideas into an essay, to be read at the next meeting. De Brosses did more: for he wrote two solid quarto volumes, published at Paris in 1756--"avec approbation et privilege du Roy," as the title page says--in which he related all that he could learn about previous voyages to the south, and pointed out, with generous amplitude, in limpid, fluent French, the desirableness of pursuing further discoveries there. Incidentally he coined a useful word: to Monsieur le President Charles de Brosses we owe the name "Australasia."* (* De Brosses, Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes 1 426 and 2 367. Max Muller, in his Lectures on the Origin of Religion page 59, stated that De Brosses coined three valuable words, "fetishism," "Polynesia," and "Australia." He certainly did not originate the word Australia, which does not occur anywhere in his book. Quiros, in 1606, named one of the islands of the New Hebrides group Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, though he seems to have done so in compliment to Philip III, who ruled Austria as well as Spain. See Markham, Voyages of Quiros volume 1 page 30 Hakluyt Society. "Australasia" was De Brosses' new name for a broad division of the globe. He derived it from the Latin australis = southern + Asia.)