SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 36.9 



into the Society, though their object only was to use the 

 title of Fellows as a snare for enticing customers.* 



As for the charge of favouring natural history at the 

 expense of the severer sciences, never was anything more 

 unfounded. Full as many papers had been received and 

 printed by Sir Joseph Banks's Council on the latter 

 subject, as had ever been so treated in any other period ; 

 quite as small a proportion of papers upon the former. The 

 Copley medal, five times bestowed, had been thrice given to 

 mathematical and astronomical papers, twice to chemical ; 

 and I may add, never either then or since, to papers upon 

 the subjects which the President was supposed most to 

 favour. The appearance of a naturalist in the chair was 

 a phenomenon by no means now first observed in the 

 sphere of the Society. Sir Isaac Newton himself had 

 been succeeded by Sir Hans Sloane, who filled the chair 

 fourteen years, and preceded by Lord Somers, whose 

 eminence is certainly not scientific, though it may be of 

 a higher order. Of the nineteen Presidents before Sir 

 Joseph Banks, nearly, if not quite the greater number 

 were men of eminent station, who never, either before or 

 after their elevation to the chair, were known to have 

 cultivated, much less improved, any branch of " natural 

 knowledge." Nor let it be supposed, as Dr. Horsley and 

 his more factious adherents used to represent, that none 

 but botanists opposed their proceedings, and sided with 

 the President. The names of Cavendish, Watson, 

 Fordyce, Heberden, Hunter, Kirwan, are quite sufficient, 

 both in number and value, to rescue Sir J. Banks' sup- 

 porters from that imputation, and to take from their 



* One was the patentee of a new water-closet. 



2B 



