We Lh Es 
73 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1896. 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS’S JOURNAL. 
Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., K.B., 
P.R.S., during Captain Cook's First Voyagein H.M.S. 
“ Endeavour” in 1768-71 to Terra del Fuego, Otahite, 
New Zealand, Australia, the Dutch East Indies, &c. 
Edited by Sir Joseph D. Hooker. Pp. li + 466. 
(London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1896.) 
HIS journal, which now sees the light after varying 
vicissitudes, will take fitting place on our book- 
shelves by the side of Darwin’s “ Voyage of the Beag/e” 
and Moseley’s “ Challenger Notes” as one of the classics 
of scientific travel. Sir Joseph Hooker, in realising a 
hope he has indulged, as he tells us, since he was a boy, 
adds another to the many services he has rendered to 
science by presenting to us this journal in the delightful 
form it has assumed under his editing. In an interesting 
preface to the volume he states the aims with which 
he has undertaken the task he has just completed, and 
from this, as well as from the charming biographical 
notice with which the journal is introduced, we do not 
scruple to quote in noticing with gratitude the appearance 
of this book. 
“ My principal motive,” he says, “for editing the journal 
kept by Sir Joseph Banks during Lieut. Cook’s first 
voyage round the world is to give prominence to his 
indefatigable labours as an accomplished observer and 
ardent collector during the whole period occupied by 
that expedition, and thus to present him as the pioneer 
of those naturalist voyagers of later years, of whom Darwin 
is the great example. This appears to me to be the more 
desirable, because in no biographical notice of Banks’ 
are his labours and studies as a working naturalist 
adequately set forth.” ... “In respect of Cook’s first 
voyage, this is in a measure due to the course pursued 
by Dr. Hawkesworth in publishing the account of the 
expedition, when Banks, with singular disinterestedness, 
placed his journal in that editor’s hands, with permission | 
to make what use of it he thought proper. The result 
was that Hawkesworth selected only such portions as 
would interest the general public, incorporating them 
with Cook’s journal, often without allusion to their author, 
and not unfrequently introducing into them reflections of 
his own as being those of Cook or of Banks. Another 
motive for editing Banks’s journal is to emphasise the 
important service which its author rendered to the ex- 
pedition. It needs no reading between the lines of the 
great navigators journal, to discover his estimation of 
the ability of his companion, of the value of his re- 
searches, and of the importance of his active co-operation 
on many occasions. It was Banks who rapidly mastered 
the language of the Otahitans, and became the inter- 
preter of the party, and who was the investigator of the 
customs, habits, &c., of these and of the natives of New 
Zealand. It was often through his activity that the 
commissariat was supplied with food. He was on various 
occasions the thief-taker, especially in the case of his 
hazardous expedition for the recovery of the stolen 
quadrant, upon the use of which, in observing the transit 
of Venus across the sun’s disc, the success of the ex- 
pedition so greatly depended. And, above all, it is to 
Banks’s forethought, and at his own risk, that an Otahitan 
man and boy were taken on board, through whom Banks 
directed, when in New Zealand, those inquiries into the 
customs of the inhabitants, which are the foundation ot 
our knowledge of that interesting people. And when 
NO. 1413, VOL. 55 | 
it is considered that the information obtained was at 
comparatively few points, and those on the coast only, 
the fulness and accuracy of the description of the New 
Zealanders, even as viewed in the light of modern know 
ledge, are very remarkable. Nor should it be forgotten 
that it was to the drawings made by the artists whom 
Banks took in his suite that the public is indebted for 
the magnificent series of plates that adorn Hawkesworth’s 
account of the voyage. Still another motive is, that 
Banks’s journal gives a life-like portrait of a naturalist’s 
daily occupation at sea and ashore nearly one hundred 
and thirty years ago ; and thus supplements the history 
of a voyage which, for extent and importance of geo- 
graphic and hydrographic results, was unique, and ‘to 
the English nation the most momentous voyage of dis- 
covery that has ever taken place’ (Wharton's * Cook,’ 
Preface), and which has, moreover, directly led to the 
prosperity of the empire ; for it was owing to the reports 
of Cook and Banks, and, it is believed, to the represen- 
tation of the latter on the advantages of Botany Bay as 
a site for a settlement, that Australia was first colonised.” 
The question that every one will no doubt ask himself 
is, how does it come about that a journal of sc much 
interest, written in 1769-71, the author of which survived 
until 1820, occupying for no less a period than forty 
years the premier position in the scientific world in 
Great Britain, is only published now—a century and a 
quarter after the events which it relates. On this point 
the editor leaves us in no doubt, and the story as he tells 
it is an interesting bit of history, not without a touch of 
romance, and withal with features not altogether credit- 
able to some of those concerned in it. 
Although only returned from the first voyage in 1771, 
Banks accepted an invitation to join, as naturalist, Cook’s 
second voyage, preparations for which began in 1772. 
This proposal called forth a strong protest from Linnzeus, 
prophetic as things turned out of the fate awaiting the 
results of the first voyage. In a letter to Mr. Ellis, he 
says: “Whilst the whole botanical world, like myself, 
has been looking for the most transcendent benefits to 
our science, from the unrivalled exertions of your 
countrymen, all their matchless and truly astonishing 
collection, such as has never been seen before nor may 
ever be seen again, is to be put aside untouched, to be 
thrust into some corner, to become perhaps the prey of 
insects and of destruction.” Banks eventually abandoned 
the intention to join the expedition, but nevertheless to 
it must be ascribed in the first instance the withholding 
from the public of his journal. Writing in 1782, Banks 
says: “The reason I have not published the account of 
my travels is that the first from want of time necessarily 
brought on by the many preparations for my second 
voyage was entrusted to Dr. Hawkesworth, and since 
that I have been engaged in a botanical work, which | 
hope soon to publish, as I have near 700 folio plates 
prepared ; it is to give an account of all such new plants 
discovered in my voyage round the world, somewhat 
above 800.” It is indeed remarkable that in course of 
his long life Banks did not give to the public his story of 
travel, but neither it nor yet the botanical work to which 
he refers in the above extract appeared. The death of 
his librarian and companion, Dr. Solander, is usually 
supposed to have led to the suppression of his botanical 
work—that for the fate of which Linnzeus was so much 
concerned. One cannot help thinking when one regards 
the whole amount of the published writings of Sir 
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