The renowned Captain James Cook explored the west coast in 1778 as part of an attempt to find the Northwest Passage from the Pacific, rather than the Atlantic side. In 1791–1792 Captain George Vancouver of Britain and Dionisio Alcalá-Galiano and Cayetano Valdés of Spain conducted further surveys in the area. Military surgeon and naturalist Michel Sarrazin (1659–1734), who lived in Quebec for more than four decades, was one of the earliest documenters of the flora and fauna of New France. The Jesuits, learned men who arrived with the colonists, also had an interest in science. In particular they founded in 1635 in Quebec City the College de Québec, eventually known as Université Laval, which would become one of the Group of 13 large research universities in Canada. Other future G-13 members founded during this period, included, Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1818, McGill University in Montreal in 1821, the University of Toronto in 1827, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1841 and the University of Ottawa in 1848. Colonial scientific curricula between 1750 and 1850, included rudimentary studies in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history and moral philosophy. As the colony grew by the beginning of the 19th century, a number of amateur "scientists", notably in Montreal and Toronto, began to record and study nature as a gentlemanly pursuit and established local learned societies. Astronomy was one of the first scientific disciplines practiced in the northern North America. There are records of astronomical observations made by Arctic explorers dating from 1612 and by French missionaries in New France who noted eclipses as early as 1618 and 1632. The Marquis de Chabert is reported to have built one of the first observatories in North America at Fort Louisbourg in 1750. A small observatory was built by Joseph DesBarres at Castle Frederick, Nova Scotia, in 1765. Elementary courses in chemistry were introduced into the curriculum of the Seminaires de Québec by Abbot John Holmes in 1830 and Abbot Isaac Desaulniers in Saint-Hyacinthe as well as the Seminaire de Montréal in 1842. Interest in biology in Canada dates from the times of European exploration. Botany attracted explorers and scientists such as Cartier 1503, Clusius 1576, C. Bauhin 1623, J. Cornuti 1635, P. Boucher 1664, M. Sarrazin 1697, J.F. Gauthier 1742, A. Michaud, 1785, W.J. Hooker 1820, A.F. Holmes 1821, L. Provencher 1862 and J. Macoun 1883, who collected and/or named various plants found in Canada.