CHAPTER VIII 



PRESIDENTSHIP OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS, continued 

 1811-1820 



1811. SIR JOSEPH BANKS, having enjoyed robust health, had 

 led a singularly active life from his youth up to the time at 

 which this narrative has arrived. But as he approached his 

 grand climacteric he became increasingly a sufferer from gout 

 and other ailments. He gradually lost the use of his lower 

 limbs and could only move about from place to place 

 on wheels. Yet his mental energy and undaunted spirit 

 triumphed over his bodily disability. He continued to take 

 his place at the meetings of the Royal Society, to which he 

 was wheeled in his easy chair, presiding there with his 

 accustomed alertness and dignity. He likewise attended 

 the weekly meetings of the Club, to which he invited his 

 guests as freely as he had done before the failure of his 

 locomotive powers. In some years during the first two 

 decades of the nineteenth century he was present at from 

 thirty to nearly forty Club dinners in the course of the year, 

 seldom at less than twenty and only once at as few as 

 nine. His friend Sir John Barrow, who often watched him 

 as he presided both at the Society and at the Club, has 

 recorded that Sir Joseph had " lost the use of his lower 

 limbs so completely as to oblige him to be carried, or, as the 

 case might require, wheeled by his servants in a chair : 

 in this way he was conveyed to the more dignified chair 

 of the Royal Society, and also to the Club the former 

 of which he very rarely omitted to attend, and not often 



