512 BANKS's JOURNAL. 



to the journal having fascinated him as a boy. Well it might ; 

 apart from natural history the story is exciting and novel enough 

 to fascinate boys of all ages. Admiral Wharton has given us 

 Cook's journal of the same momentous voyage, which has had 

 such far-reaching imperial consequences in Australia and New 

 Zealand. It is not a little odd to read the passages dealing with 

 these countries, and immediately afterwards the record of the 

 landing at a part of New Guinea scarcely known to this day. The 

 naturalist will instinctively place this volume on his shelves in the 

 company of the Vuyage of the Beagle, Mr. Wallace's Amazons and 

 Malay Ai-cliipelaijo, and Sir Joseph's own HimaUiyan Juunials. I 

 have put these books together not as containing exploits of travel 

 merely, but from the human interest, the brimfulness of natural 

 curiosity tliey all exhibit, the companionship which is the highest 

 and most inanitable quality of books of travel. Strange that so 

 few travellers, other than naturalists, have ever attained it, — it is 

 indeed the touch of nature, and no inspiration of art such as guides 

 the romance writer to a similar success. 



From my knowledge of the MS. journal I can testify — though it 

 were absurd to suppose in this case such testimony to be little 

 better than impertinence — to the admirable editing and selection 

 made by Sir Joseph Hooker ; but I do it for the better reason that 

 his son, Mr. Reginald Hooker, deserves the thanks of all who will 

 enjoy this volume, for the assistance he rendered in the work, and 

 in drawing up the admirable notices of the earlier voyagers and 

 others relerred to by Banks. Sir Jo-seph has himself given an 

 interesting account of both Banks and Solander, of whom portraits 

 are published. The majority of naturalists, probably nearly all of 

 them, know little more of Banks than that he was a great patron 

 of science, a more or less gilded personage, who had the genius to 

 judge of men with great success, and that he had much to do with 

 giving us Robert Brown. When they have read his Journal they 

 will know him as a man in whom the fire of natural curiosity 

 glowed, of indomitable courage and unfailing resource, a man 

 whom it was well for science that this country possessed. There 

 are indeed passages in the MS. journal whicli exhibit Banks as a 

 man of considerable humour, but these it would have been injudici- 

 ous to publish. Though the sometime Queen of Otaheite has been 

 dead these many years, scandal about her, as about other queens, 

 is better buried. The "young person" herself may read the 

 book, with nothing worse to cause her blushes than the incidental 

 romantic story of how Jean Bary, the servant of Commerson, 

 naturalist to Bougainville's voyage, was discovered by the Tahitians 

 to be a woman who had followed this young botanist to sea " in a 

 sailor's blue array," as Mr. Gilbert describes it in another but 

 mythical and wholesale instance of the same abandonment of 

 feminme principles. 



The Journal will prove of immense interest to the anthropologist, 

 who will find in it abundant observation of peoples untouched by 

 civilization, — very shrewd observation, obtained in most cases at 

 first hand, and by the method of living intimately among the races 



