4 
SIR JOSEPH RAXKS. 
“ The present seems a suitable opportunity or calling attention to 
the Newfoundland material in the Banksian collection. Besides the 
large number of specimens scattered through the National Herbarium, 
(London), each sheet being written upon the back by Banks himself, 
we have a MS. list in his own hand of the plants observed, with 
localities, and a transcript made in 1772 by his sister, Sarah Sophia 
Banks, of his ‘ Journal of a Voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador: 
commencing April ye seventh, and ending November the 17th, 1766.’ 
At this time Banks was in his twenty-fourth year; his journal, which 
it is hoped may some day be published, is full of notes upon the natural 
history of the island, especially on the plants, of which the following 
is an example : — 
Croque, June 15, 1700. Weather to-clay extremely hot : walk ovit in the Evening, 
fiml a kiiul of butter-bur with palmated leaves {Pctamtes palmatu-s): broad-leaved 
Kalinia (K. glaum), in jirodigious abundance, scattered without distinction over 
bogs and hills, wherever it is not shaded by trees, but rather affecting dry soil : 
a kintl of rush iq)on the highest and dryest tops of hills, one-blade (Maianthemum 
bifolium), everywhere in great abundance, most commonly with three leaves on 
each stalk, from the buxuriancy with which it grows; a kind of very smalt Carex; 
a kind of Andromeda {Vaccinium macromrpon), whose calj’x and corolla are both 
four-lid, growing always upon Hogs; a kind of Bilberry, growing on the most 
exposed sides of Rocks. 
“ On his return. Banks compiled the list already referred to — probably 
the earliest in existence for Newfoundland. It is in itself sufficient 
evidence of his botanical attainments.* * * § He employed Ehret to make 
drawings of the more interesting of his plants ; these, of which a list 
followsf, are most beautifully executed on vellum, each being signed 
‘ G. 1). Ehret, 1767.’ 
“ Of these twenty-two J, seventeen are bound together in a volume in 
the Department of Botany. The remaining five are in a volume 
containing the originals of the thirteen plates in Aiton’s “ Hortus 
Kewensis,” there is no indication in the preface as to whence the plates 
were taken, and I do not think it is generally known that they were 
sup])lied from the Banksian collection. On the drawings of Kalmia 
glaucn, Vaccinium macrocarpon, and Potent ilia tridentata, is a note by 
Banks stating that they were taken from dry specimens from New- 
foundland ; the first of these and Rhodora canadensis are noted by 
Alton as introduced to Kew Gardens in 1767 by Banks, which suggests 
that he also brought home living plants.’"^ 
• Xota bene. 
t Xot reproduced liere. 
X There is ,ia eiimiieration of phants collected by Sir William Macgregor recently, in Labrador, 
in Kew Bulletin, March. 1907. 
§ J. Britten, in Journ. Hot., xlii, 84-5. 
