I. X^oyage to Newfoundland (1766). 
In May, 1766, Joseph Banks was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 
and in the summer of the same year he went to Newfoundland and 
Labrador, then terrce incognitce, to collect plants with his friend. Lieu- 
tenant Phipps, commanding H.M.S. “ Niger,” whose mission it was to 
protect the fisheries. He returned to England the following winter by 
way of Lisbon, from whence he brought the first specimen of caoutchouc 
to England.* 
In Banks the love of travel, with the view to the pursuit of natural 
history, early showed itself. Most young men of wealth and similar 
social standing contented themselves with a sojourn in Paris — this 
was considered good form — or the “ grand tour,” embracing other 
European countries, was undertaken. But Banks did not shrink from 
uncomfortable and out-of-the-way voyages — journeys which had no 
attraction for the ordinary traveller; he desired opportunities for 
cultivating his faculty of observation. And so he began with New- 
foundland and Labrador. 
Tlie original of Banks’ Newfoundland Journal is in the pos=ession 
of Mr. S. \V. Silvert, of .3 York Gate, S.W. It consists of two small 
quarto volumes, the first of which alone was transcribed by his sister, 
as noted on p. 84. It ends with a note on a severe storm encountered 
on the voyage to Lisboii : 
“ Among other things that suffered, my poor box of seeds was one, which was 
entirely demolished, as was my box of earth with plants in it, which stood upon 
deck ” ; so that it would seem that Banks did not bring home living plants as 
suggested on p. 85. The second volume has only nineteen pages of MS., beginning, 
“November 17, 1760. Arrived from Newfoundland in the River “Tagus”: it 
contains nothing of interest.* 
The following manuscript is at Kew ; — 
“ Banks, lit. lion. Sir Joseph, Bart. Journal of a voyage to 
Newfoundland and Labrador, commencing April ye 7th and 
ending November ye Nth, 1766. [Copy bv W. J. Anderson.] 
104 ff. fol.” 
* Weld, " History of the Royal Society,” ii, 106. 
t This journal has since been purchased, with the rest of the York Gate Library, by the South 
AustraUau Branch of the Royal Geograpnical Society of Australasia, Adelaide, 
t James Britten, in Journal of Botany, xUi, 352 (1904). 
