THE FORSTER HERBARIUM. OOO 



of carriage hither as well as the charge of saving them from the 

 wreck were a dead loss. The loss of my herbal has never been 

 replaced, as I had in it most of those specimens of which there are 

 now no duplicates, except those which j^oii had from us at the 

 revision of our herbals." (MSS. Banksian Correspondence, i. 309). 



This " revision of herbals " took place in 1778 ; we have a list 

 in Sir Joseph Banks's handwriting headed, "List of plants given 

 me by Messrs. Forsters when I looked at their specimens in Jan. 1778 

 and compared them with my Herbarium." This list contains about 

 236 species, of which 85 are from the Cape ; another list enume- 

 rates 78 from Madeira ; and there is also a ' Catalogue of a collec- 

 tion of plants presented to Joseph Banks, Esq., by John Eeinhold 

 Forster and George Forster ' (in the handwriting of the former), 

 in which 255 species are enumerated, 19, however, being " blank 

 or wanting in this Herbal C." 



It may be of interest to transcribe a note by Kobert Brown, 

 which is among the MSS. in the Botanical Department of the 

 British Museum. It is a copy of a memorandum by Banks, and 

 Brown appends to it — " Copied March 9th, 1828, having obtained 

 leave the same day to do so from Sir Edward Knatchbull, to whom 

 I delivered it, along with the portrait of Captain Cook, Sir J. 

 Banks's diplomas, and several other things of smaller importance." 

 The note runs thus:— "John Eeynhold Forster and George his son 

 embarked in the year 1772 on board the ' Eesolution,' Capt. Cook, 

 bound to the South Seas on discovery, sent by the Board of 

 Admiralty ; the father as naturalist and the son as his assistant, in 

 my room when I was disappointed of my anxious desire of under- 

 taldng that voyage, by the machinations of Sir Hugh Palliser, the 

 Comptroller of the Navy. For their reward they had 4000 pounds, 

 which at my desire was voted by the House of Commons to enable 

 Dr. Jas. Lind, of Edinburgh, M.D., to accompany me ; but the vote 

 having passed in vague terms it was thought proper to apply it to the 

 benefit of the voyage of discovery in that manner. On their return 

 they did me the favour to present me with very many specimens, 

 both of plants and animals which they had collected in the different 

 countries they had visited. In the year 1776 I purchased of them, 

 for 400 pounds, all the drawings of animals and plants which they 

 had made in the course of the voyage," J. E. Forster's letter 

 ('Banksian Correspondence,' i. 132), dated Jan. 9, 1776, speaks of 

 the sum offered by Banks as four hundred guineas. 



The drawings are in various stages of completeness, some being 

 coloured throughout, others in part, and others merely pencil 

 sketches, some of them very incomplete. They are localised and 

 dated by Forster and named by Solander. Among them are the 

 originals of the plates illustrating G. Forster's ' Fasciculus Plant- 

 arum Magellanicarum ' in Comment. Soc. Getting, ix. (1789). 

 From them were prepared a number of copper-plates, of which 

 Pritzel says, " Icones plantarum in itinere ad insulas novis aus- 

 tralis coUectorum ineditte 130 tabulae senere in folio, fuerunt olim 

 in Bibl. Lambertiana." This copy is described in the Catalogue of 

 Lambert's sale (April 19, 1842), as containing 131 plates, "in 



