I oo 



NATURE 



[September 24, 19 14 



profit we can confer by our coming here can balance 

 that which we receive; while over and above this is 

 the personal kindliness of the Australian welcome, 

 which on behalf of the visitors of this section from 

 the Old Country I take this opportunity of gratefully 

 acknowledging. Of the members of the British Asso- 

 ciation, those who pursue the natural sciences may 

 expect to gain most by their experiences here ; and 

 perhaps it is the botanists who stand to come off best 

 of all. Living as most of us do in a country of old 

 cultivation, the vegetation of which has been con- 

 trolled, transformed, and from the natural floristic 

 point of view almost ruined by the hand of man, it 

 is with delight and expectation that we visit a land 

 not yet spoilt. To those who study Ecology, that 

 branch of the science which regards vegetation col- 

 lectively as the natural resultant of its external cir- 

 cumstances, the antithesis will come home with special 

 strength, and the opportunity now before them of 

 seeing Nature in her pristine state will not, I am sure, 

 be thrown away. 



I may be allowed here to express to the Australian 

 members of the section my regret that the presidency 

 for this occasion should not have fallen to one who 

 could with unusual weight and knowledge have 

 addressed them from the floristic and geographical 

 point of view. I mean, to Professor Bayley Balfour, 

 of Edinburgh, who was actually invited by the Council 

 to preside. He could have handled the subject of 

 your rich and peculiar flora with detailed knowledge ; 

 and, with the true Hookerian touch, he would have 

 pictured to you in bold outlines its relation to present 

 problems. Failing such equipment, I may at least 

 claim to have made some of your rare and peculiar 

 forms the subject of special study at intervals spread 

 over thirty years : for it was in 1884 that I was 

 supplied with living plants of Phylloglossum by Baron 

 Ferdinand von Miiller, while a paper to be published 

 this year contains details of a number of ferns kindly 

 sent to me by various collectors from New Zealand. 

 I have been personally interested more especially in 

 your rare Pteridophytes, isolated survivals as they 

 surely are of very ancient vegetation. I propose to 

 indicate later in this address some points of interest 

 which they present. But first I shall offer some more 

 general remarks on the history of the investigation 

 of the Australian flora, as a reminder of the recent 

 death of Sir Joseph Hooker, whose work helped so 

 greatly to promote a philosophical knowledge of the 

 flora of this quarter of the globe. 



Few, if any, of the large areas of the earth's surface 

 have developed their coat of vegetation under such 

 interesting conditions as that which bears the Aus- 

 tralasian flora. In its comparative isolation, and in 

 its freedom from the disturbing influence of man, it 

 may be held as unique. We may picture to ourselves 

 the field as having been open to evolutionary ten- 

 dencies, unusually free from the incursion of com- 

 petitive foreign types, and with its flora shaped and 

 determined through long- ages in the main by climatic 

 influences. Naturally the controlling eff'ect of animal 

 life had been present throughout, as well as that of 

 parasitic and fungal attack ; but that potent artificial 

 influence, the hand of man, was less effective here 

 than in almost any other area. The aborigines were 

 not tillers of the soil : in their digging for roots and 

 such-like actions they might rank with the herbivor- 

 ous animals, so far as they affected the vegetation. 

 Probably the most powerful influence they exercised 

 was through fire. And so the conditions remained, 

 the native flora being practically untouched, until the 

 visit of Captain Cook in 1770 : for little account need 

 be taken of the handful of specimens collected by 

 Dampier in the seventeenth century. 



NO. 2343, VOL. 94] 



Captain Cook shipped with him in the Endeavour 

 a very remarkable man, viz., Joseph Banks, whom 

 Dr. Maiden has described as "the Father of Aus- 

 . tralia." He not only acted as the scientific director 

 ! of the expedition, but he was also its financier. 

 Educated at Eton and Oxford, he found himself as 

 a young man possessed of an ample fortune. Though 

 devoted to field sports, he did not, like so many 

 others, spend his life upon them. Following the dic- 

 tates of a taste early awakened in him, he turned his 

 attention to travel for scientific ends. His opportunity 

 came when Cook was fitting out the Endeavour for 

 his first voyage to the Southern Seas. Banks asked 

 leave of the Admiralty to join the expedition, which 

 was granted, and he furnished all the scientific stores 

 and a staff of nine persons at his own expense. 



The story of that great expedition of 1768 to 1771 

 is given in "Cook's Voyages," compiled by Dr. 

 Hawkesworth, a book that may be found in every 

 library. Though it is evident throughout that Banks 

 took a leading part in the observational work of the 

 expedition, it has not been generally known how 

 deeply indebted Hawkesworth was to Banks for the 

 scientific content of his story. This became apparent 

 only on the publication of Banks's own Journal 125 

 years after the completion of the voyage. The cir- 

 cumstances of this have a local interest, so I may be 

 excused for briefly relating them. 



Banks's papers, including the MS. Journal, passed 

 with his library and Herbarium on his death to his 

 librarian, Robert Brown. On the death of the latter 

 they remained in the British Museum. But after 

 lying there for a long period they were claimed and 

 removed by a member of Banks's family, and were 

 put up for auction. The Journal was sold for 

 7/. 2S. 6d., and the last that has been heard of it is 

 that it came into the possession of a gentleman in 

 Sydney. Perhaps it may be lying within a short dis- 

 tance of the spot where we are now met. This valu- 

 able record, fit to rank with Darwin's "Voyage of the 

 Beagle,'' or Moseley's account of the "Voyage of the 

 Challenger,'' might thus have been wholly lost to the 

 public had it not been for the care of Dawson-Turner, 

 who had the original transcribed by his daughters, 

 helped by his grandson, Joseph Dalton Hooker. The 

 boy was fascinated by it, and doubtless it helped to 

 stimulate to like enterprises that botanist to whom 

 Australia owes so much. The copy thus made re- 

 mained in the British Museum. Finally, from it in 

 1896 Sir Joseph Hooker himself edited the Journal, 

 in a slightly abridged form. It is now apparent how 

 very large a share Banks actually took in the observa- 

 tion and recording, and how deeply indebted to him 

 was the compiler of the account of the voyage pub- 

 lished more than a century earlier, not only for facts, 

 but even for lengthy excerpts. 



The plants collected in Australia by this expedition 

 amounted to some 1000 species, and with Banks's 

 Herbarium they found, after his death, a home in the 

 British Museum. Several minor collections were sub- 

 sequently made in Australia, but the next expedition 

 of prime importance was that of Flinders in 180 1 to 

 1805. What made it botanically notable was the 

 presence of Robert Brown. Hooker speaks of this 

 voyage as being, "as far as botany is concerned, the 

 most important in its results ever taken." The col- 

 lections came from areas so widely apart as King 

 George's Sound, Southern Tasmania, and the Gulf 

 of Carpentaria. These together with Banks's plants 

 and other minor collections, formed the foundation 

 for Brown's " Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae," 

 a work which was described in i860 by Sir Joseph 

 Hooker as being "though a fragment . . . the 

 greatest botanical work that has ever appeared." It 



