SIR JOSEPH BANKS XXxiii 
stantly occupied in making drawings of Australian and other 
plants, keeping him in liberal pay, and leaving him a legacy 
in his will. 
He was the first to bring indiarubber into notice, and 
early advocated the cultivation of tea in India. He estab- 
lished botanic gardens in Jamaica, St. Vincent, and Ceylon, 
besides giving invaluable support to Colonel Kyd in the 
foundation of the garden at Sibpur, near Calcutta. 
He was a keen agriculturist, and amongst his very few 
published writings one is on Blight Mildew and Rust, 
another on the introduction of the Potato, and a third on 
the Apple Aphis. The Horticultural Society was founded 
in 1804, and Banks is named as one of the persons to 
whom the Charter was granted in 1809. The esteem in 
which he was held by this Society is shown by their electing 
him an honorary member, and by their instituting, after his 
death, a Banksian medal. 
Services of an international character were rendered by 
him when, in the course of war, the collections of foreign 
naturalists had been captured by British vessels; on no less 
than eleven occasions were they restored to their former 
owners through the direct intervention of Banks with the 
Lords of the Admiralty and Treasury. The disinterestedness 
of such a course will be at once understood when it is 
remembered that these collections, some of them of inestim- 
able value (now at the Jardin des Plantes at Paris), would 
otherwise have contributed to the aggrandisement of his 
own magnificent museum. “He even sent as far as the 
Cape of Good Hope to procure some chests belonging to 
Humboldt; and it is well known that his active exertions 
liberated many scientific men from foreign prisons. He 
used great exertions to mitigate the captivity of the unfor- 
tunate Flinders, and it was principally by his intercession 
that our Government issued orders in favour of La Perouse ” 
(Weld’s History of the Royal Society). 
Great as his services to science are known to have been, 
these will never be fully realised till his correspondence in 
the British Museum and elsewhere shall have been thor- 
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