SIR JOSEPH BANKS xxxiii 



stantly occupied in making drawings of Australian and other 

 plants, keeping him in liberal pay, and leaving him a legacy 

 in his will. 



He was the first to bring indiarubber into notice, and 

 early advocated the cultivation of tea in India. He estab- 

 lished botanic gardens in Jamaica, St. Vincent, and Ceylon, 

 besides giving invaluable support to Colonel Kyd in the 

 foundation of the garden at Sibpur, near Calcutta. 



He was a keen agriculturist, and amongst his very few 

 published writings one is on Blight Mildew and Eust, 

 another on the introduction of the Potato, and a third on 

 the Apple Aphis. The Horticultural Society was founded 

 in 1804, and Banks is named as one of the persons to 

 whom the Charter was granted in 1809. The esteem in 

 which he was held by this Society is shown by their electing 

 him an honorary member, and by their instituting, after his 

 death, a Banksian medal. 



Services of an international character were rendered by 

 him when, in the course of war, the collections of foreign 

 naturalists had been captured by British vessels ; on no less 

 than eleven occasions were they restored to their former 

 owners through the direct intervention of Banks with the 

 Lords of the Admiralty and Treasury. The disinterestedness 

 of such a course will be at once understood when it is 

 remembered that these collections, some of them of inestim- 

 able value (now at the Jardin des Plantes at Paris), would 

 otherwise have contributed to the aggrandisement of his 

 own magnificent museum. " He even sent as far as the 

 Cape of Good Hope to procure some chests belonging to 

 Humboldt ; and it is well known that his active exertions 

 liberated many scientific men from foreign prisons. He 

 used great exertions to mitigate the captivity of the unfor- 

 tunate Flinders, and it was principally by his intercession 

 that our Government issued orders in favour of La Perouse " 

 (Weld's History of the Eoyal Society). 



Great as his services to science are known to have been, 

 these will never be fully realised till his correspondence in 

 the British Museum and elsewhere shall have been thor- 



