32 LIFE OF 



and keeping up of so large a garden, together with the failure 

 of the parliamentary grant and the royal subscription, both of 

 which the Society had been led to expect, but which it never 

 received, added to some losses which it sustained a few years 

 afterwards, gave a temporary check to its means ; but the 

 active support of its many zealous friends enabled it to recover 

 its position, without contracting for a moment the field of its 

 usefulness, and long before his death, Mr. Knight could safely 

 contemplate this society as a permanent means of applying to 

 the benefit of the community those physiological principles 

 which he had laboured through life to establish. 



One of the earliest means adopted by the council for promot- 

 ing the improvement of horticulture, was the establishment of 

 medals as a reward for merit ; these were first given in the year 

 1808, and on the 1st of May, 1814, the gold medal was voted 

 by the Society to Mr. Knight, " For his various and important 

 communications to the Society, not only of papers printed in 

 their Transactions, but of grafts and buds of his valuable new 

 fruits." 



A few years later, the council thought it desirable to 

 establish a class of medals of a smaller size than the original 

 ones; and soon after the death of Sir Joseph Banks, in 1819, 

 on carrying this resolution into effect, they embraced this 

 opportunity of recording their sense of the benefits the Society 

 had derived from his support and influence, by calling it the 

 Banksian Medal, and placing Sir Joseph's profile on the obverse 

 of the medal. 



In the year 1835, in consequence of the extensive distribution 

 of these medals, the dies had become worn out ; at the same 

 time, the encouragement to horticulturists which they had given 

 had been so manifest, that it was determined to have three dies 

 prepared by one of the first artists of this country. An emble- 

 matic representation of Flora, attended by the four Seasons, was 

 selected as the design for the large medal ; the head of Sir Joseph 

 Banks was again adopted for the smaller one ; and for the inter- 

 mediate one, the council determined that no device could be 



