SIR JOSEPH BASKS. 
164 
view of proceeding with Colonel Mudge to Scotland, to connect 
the measurement of certain degrees of the meridian with those already 
measured in Spain and France. Biot’s complimentary references to 
Sir Joseph Banks, given in the Memoires de rinstitut for 1818, are 
quoted by Weld,* who adds, “ This tribute to the President of the 
Xo. 44. — Sir Joseph Baxks. Tassie medallion. Original of glass, white on a 
black ground. 
Royal Society is valuable, as illustrative of the constant care and 
attention which Sir Joseph Banks evinced for aU matters respecting 
science.” 
In 1817 the Council of the Royal Society resumed the consideration 
of the practicability of a Xorth-west Passage, and Sir Joseph Banks 
wrote a very interesting letter| to the First Lord of the Admiralty 
(Lord Melville) on the subject. Sir Joseph Banks wrote, “ that a 
considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must 
have taken place in the circumpolar regions, by which the severity 
♦ Op. cit., ii, 271. 
t Op. cit., ii, 274 
