Voyage de la corvette l'Astrolabe…Atlas

1830

Expedition Reports Q115 A7 DW27 1830 v. 7a

Paris: J. Tastu

The earliest scientific reports held in Special Collections are from the 1826-29 French voyage of L’Astrolabe led by Jules Dumont D’Urville (1790-1842). This information-gathering expedition hoped to build on the scientific knowledge gained by a previous French expedition of the 1820s led by Louis Duperrey. D’Urville was a keen scientist and his crew included three naturalists. Between them they collected numerous samples, including a male specimen of the already rare Orange-wattled crow (Glaucopis cinerea) or South Island Kokako. Declared extinct in 2008, this bird has not been definitively sighted since the 1960s.