THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 149 



honour, for it was not the President of the Royal Society that 

 collected the botanical specimens so admirably illustrated in 

 this handsome volume ; but the British Museum, in its rules for 

 cataloguing, lays down the doctrine that the last name or title is 

 always to be used. The works of George Eliot are entered as by 

 Mrs. Cross, and probably the works of Sir John Lubbock have by 

 this time been transferred to Avebury, Lord. The collector of 

 these specimens was a young man of 26, with a passion for botany, 

 but up to any fun, and decidedly what boys call " larky." It is 

 now more than 130 years since the specimens were collected, and 

 about 120 since the plates were engraved. 



In April of the year 1770 Botany Bay was first entered by His 

 Majesty's bark Endeavour, on board which vessel was a young 

 gentleman of fortune, Mr. Joseph Banks, educated at Eton and at 

 Oxford. He had engaged two artists to illustrate the voyage, 

 but during it both of them died. He had also secured the services 

 of a Swedish botanist, Dr. Solander, the pupil, and said to be the 

 favourite pupil, of the great Linnaeus; for Mr. Banks had a passion 

 for botany as well as for travel and adventure. The two young 

 men revelled in the new plants that they found on the shore of 

 the bay, and Cook expressly states that it was owing to " the 

 great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in 

 this place " that he changed the name of the bay from the earlier 

 " Stingray " to its later euphonious name. Though a few other 

 opportunities, three in all, occurred to the naturalists of landing 

 on the eastern coast of Australia, then called New Holland, the 

 time allowed by the captain was usually brief; but a chance that 

 nearly proved fatal gave them and their companions several weeks 

 on shore. One night the bark ran upon the point of a coral reef, 

 and narrowly escaped total wreck ; it became necessary to put 

 into some bay for the repair of the ship's hull. The place chosen 

 was the mouth of a river, which, after the ship, was called the 

 Endeavour River, where, more than a century later, a small town 

 sprang up out of the exigencies of a goldfield, and was promptly 

 and properly named Cooktown. Here the botanists collected 

 many more specimens. Here they first saw the kangaroo. Here, 

 and here only, they heard the language of the aborigines. 



On the arrival of the Endeavour in England great was the 

 interest felt, and many a trace of it can be found in the literature 

 of the day. It was decided that a narrative of so important a 

 voyage must be prepared by some man of letters, and Dr. John 

 Hawkesworth* was selected. The sum given by the publishers 

 G£6,ooo) for the copyright is a measure of the general expectation 

 of something interesting ; three guineas was the price for a single 



* The fullest account of Hawkesworth that has ever appeared is in the 

 Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1900. It is not without interest to 

 Australians. 



