18 JJA.NK.^ C'KLKliliATlON. 



Jt is generally stated tliat BaiiUs made the acquaintance of 

 Solandor (wlic came to Loiidon in 17C0) in 17<>7; but in the first 

 letter of Lij^htFoot relVreiicc; is maile to the latter in a way which 

 indic:itt.s that at that jn-riod at latest — the beginning of 1760 — 

 lianks had luiowlcdge of him as a l)otanist. ISolandcr became a 

 I'ellow (if tlu; Koyal tSociety in 1704 and Assistant-Librarian in 

 the Eritisii Mnsmnn in the following year, and it seems reasonable 

 to supi'osc that Banks had met « ith him in one of these jiositions. 

 That Baidts was thoroughly acquainted with tSolander's botanical 

 qualilications is evident frou) the fact that when, in 1708, he 

 ])roposed to join the voyage to the South Seas in order to 

 observe the transit of Venus, Solander was invited to accompany 

 him as naturalist — it may be noted that the arrangements for 

 collectors and collections were carried out entirely at Banks's 

 expense, at an estimated cost of .£10,000. He engaged as one of 

 the artists Sydney Parkinson, a young Scoti;hn)an w ho had been 

 commended to his notice by John Lee, the well-known nursei'y- 

 inan of Hammersmith. In 1707 Banks sent Parkinson to dra\r 

 at Kew, and the drawings then made (on vellum) arc in the 

 Department of Botany. Banks expressed the greatest satisfac- 

 tion with Parkinson's work during the voyage — "he behaved to 

 me uncommonly well, and with unbounded industry made for me 

 a much larger number of drawings than I ever expected." The 

 total number made during the voyage was 055, of which 075 were 

 sketches and 280 finished drawings. All the Australian and most 

 of the New Zealand ones are sketches ; those from Brazil, Madeira, 

 Tierra del Fuego and the Friendly Islands are nearly all finished 

 drawings; of the Java plants tiiere are 44 linished drawings 

 and 72 sketches : in a few cases Parkinson made both sketches 

 and finished drawings of the same plant. On the back of the 

 sketches are notes by Parkinson of the colour of the leaves, 

 flowers, etc., and the locality is added by Banks. 



As is well known, finished drawings from the sketches were 

 made for J3anks by various artists on the return of the voyage, 

 during which Parkinson had died, and cop])er-plates Avere prepared 

 for publication ; from these a certain number of the Australian 

 plants were reproduced in a volume published by the Trustees of 

 the British Museum in 1900-1905: in the introduction to this 1 

 have given a detailed account of the history of the collections. 

 Parkinson's drawings and sketches, \\ilh the finished drawings 

 of other artists and impressions of the copper-])lates, form a series 

 of volumes in the Department of Botany. 



The descri[)tion of the ])laiits eollccled during the voyage wiiS 

 of coursH the work of Solander, whose manuscripts — both the 

 original draft and a fair coi)y prepared for publication — are in the 

 Department; but we have also a list of the collections in Banks's 

 hand, geographically arranged, in the order in which they were 

 loosely ))hiced in the drying books in which they were brought 

 home : in this the species supposed to be new are indicated by 



