42 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
MacOvvaii, of the Cape, and also the Directors of the Royal Gardens of Kew and 
Edinburgh, I have been able to obtain a number of these Brownian plants (of 
special interest to us in Sydney, Brown’s headquarters for .so long), but the ojipor- 
tunity given to Sydney in 1876 has gone, never to return. 
I am the founder of the National Herbarium of New South Wales, and the 
herculean task of getting together specimens of the old Australian collections has 
devolved upon me. I take this opportunity of repeating. Sir, the obligation that 
this herbarium is under to you for using your influence on its behalf. I may be 
pardoned for saying that the offices which I at present hold of honorary secretary 
of the Banks’ Memorial Fund and President of the Australian Historical Society 
are an indication that I look upon old specimens with especial veneration, and that 
their care is an earnest object of solicitude with me. 
I am sorry to hear that the publication of the plates of Cook’s Voj'age has been 
discontinued by the Trustees of the British Mu.seum, and, if this decision is not 
irrevocable, I shoidd be glad if the various Australian Governments could be 
communicated with and asked to share the expense.* I am sure that such a 
communication would receive sympathetic attention from the Premierf of mj' 
own State, who has done so much to keep the memory of Cook, Banks, and Solander 
green. 
In jiassing, I may remark, in regard to my “ defending the practice ” of publish ng 
certain unpublished names (if considered desirable), that mj’ views on this 
subject, cannot, in fairness to myself, be stated in a few words. I, however, still 
think that my position as fully defined in Proc. Linn. Soc., X.S. II'., xxxvii, 698-701, 
is a reasonable one. But why doubt my loyalty to the Vienna Code? 
As regards the “priceless historical documents” I had in my mind, I was 
partly thinking of Solander’s Journal, which Mr. J. J. Fletcher of Sydnej- and 
you have already dealt with.J I am sorry to learn that Solander left so little 
botanical material not yet published. 
But I was particularly thinking of the material that Brown had accumulated 
for the unfinished “ Prodromus.’" It was also, I think, his duty to have published 
the Banks and Solander jdates and MSS. An explanation of his neglect appears 
to be that he carried his love of seclusion to excess. 
He was placed by Banks in a financially independent position, while he was in 
unfettered control of the finest botanical library and herbarium of liis time. He 
was botanically without a peer, and appears to have resented the intrusions of 
younger men. Brown’s attitude appears to me to be simply an instance of the 
well-known dangers of an absolute despotism. Had he reahsed that the collections 
in his care were public property, for the use of all qualified botanists under proper 
restrictions, things woulfl have been very different. 
Of the National Australian genus Eucalyptus onlj’ six species are referred to 
by Brown in his Collected Works. Hooker says Brown returned to England with 
the descriptions of his plants witten out.§ If so he had described in MS. 100 
species of eucalypts.[j These were, of course, not published. What became of 
the MSS. ? And how is it that Brown’s successors have had to worry out eucalypts 
without any help from Brown, who had such great opportunities, and who was 
the, first botanist of his age? The world is poorer through not knowing the views 
of Brown on such a widely diffused and difficult genus. 
• Mr. Britten informs me that all the Australian plants have been published. The remainder 
are of Brazil, Pacific Islands, Xew Zealand (already in hand for the New Zealand Government) 
&c. 
t Sir J. H. Carruthers, who was in the office at the time. 
t Journ. Bol., Feb., 1906. 
§ Proc. Linn. Soc., 1886-7, p. 58. 
II Flinders’ “ Voyage to Terra Australis,” ii (Appendix), p. 547. 
