Septbmbeb 11, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



359 



work of the expedition, it has not been 

 generally known how deeply indebted 

 Hawkesworth was to Banks for the scien- 

 tific content of his story. This became 

 apparent only on the publication of Banks 's 

 own journal 125 years after the comple- 

 tion of the Toyage. The circumstances of 

 this have a local interest, so I may be 

 excused for briefly relating them. 



Banks's papers, including the MS. jour- 

 nal, passed with his library and herbarium 

 on his death to his librarian, Robert Brown. 

 On the death of the latter they remained 

 in the British Museum. But after lying 

 there for a long period they were claimed 

 and removed by a member of Banks's 

 family, and were put up for auction. The 

 journal was sold for £7 2s. 6d., and the 

 last that has been heard of it is that it 

 came into the possession of a gentleman in 

 Sydney. Perhaps it may be lying within 

 a short distance of the spot where we are 

 now met. This valuable record, fit to rank 

 with Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle," or 

 Moseley's account of the "Voyage of the 

 Challenger," might thus have been wholly 

 lost to the public had it not been for the 

 care of Dawson-Turner, who had the ori- 

 ginal transcribed by his daughters, helped 

 by his grandson, Joseph Dalton Hooker. 

 The boy was fascinated by it, and doubtless 

 it helped to stimulate to like enterprises 

 that botanist to whom Australia owes so 

 much. The copy thus made remained in 

 the British Museum. Finally, from it in 

 1896 Sir Joseph Hooker himself edited the 

 journal, in a slightly abridged form. It is 

 now apparent how very large a share 

 Banks actually took in the observation and 

 recording, and how deeply indebted to him 

 was the compiler of the account of the voy- 

 age published more than a century earlier, 

 not only for facts, but even for lengthy 

 excerpts. 



The plants collected in Australia by this 



expedition amounted to some 1,000 species, 

 and with Banks's herbarium they found, 

 after his death, a home in the British 

 Museum. Several minor collections were 

 subsequently made in Australia, but the 

 next expedition of prime importance was 

 that of Flinders in 1801 to 1805. What 

 made it botanically notable was the pres- 

 ence of Robert Brown. Hooker speaks of 

 this voyage as being, "as far as botany is 

 concerned, the most important in its results 

 ever taken." The collections came from 

 areas so widely apart as King George's 

 Sound, southern Tasmania, and the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria. These, together with Banks's 

 plants and other minor collections, formed 

 the foundation for Brown's " Prodromus 

 FlorEe Nov£e Hollands, ' ' a work which was 

 described in 1860 by Sir Joseph Hooker 

 as being "though a fragment . . . the 

 greatest botanical work that has ever ap- 

 peared. " It was published in 1810. I 

 must pass over without detailed remark 

 the notable pioneer work of Allan Cun- 

 ningham, and of some others. The next 

 outstanding fact in the history of Austral- 

 ian botany was the voyage of Ross, with 

 the Erebus and the Terror: for with him 

 was Joseph Hooker, whose botanical work 

 gave an added distinction to an otherwise 

 remarkable expedition. 



The prime object of the voyage was a 

 magnetic survey, and this determined its 

 course. But in the intervals of sailing the 

 Antarctic seas the two ships visited Ascen- 

 sion Island, St. Helena, the Cape, New 

 Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Kerguelen 

 Island, Tierra del Fuego, and the Falkland 

 Islands. Thus Hooker had the oppor- 

 tunity of collecting and observing upon all 

 the great cireumpolar areas of the southern 

 hemisphere. He welded together the re- 

 sults into his great work "The Antarctic 

 Flora." It was published in six large 

 quarto volumes. In them about 3,000 



