The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768

The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 [Volume One] Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 [Volume One] [electronic resource] Joseph Banks J. C. Beaglehole Creation of machine-readable version Keyboarded by Aptara, Inc. Creation of digital images Aptara, Inc. Conversion to TEI.2-conformant markup Aptara, Inc. ca. 1618 kilobytes New Zealand Electronic Text Centre Wellington, New Zealand Tim Beaglehole Modern English, Bea01Bank

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2007 <name key="name-401747" type="title" TEIform="name">The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 [Volume One]</name> Joseph Banks J. C. Beaglehole Angus & Robertson Ltd 1962 Source copy consulted: Victoria University of Wellington Library, G420 C7 B218 E

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Front Cover

Back Cover

Title Page

The Sir Joseph Banks Memorial The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks in Two Volumes Volume I

Joseph Banks from the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds

The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 Edited by J. C. Beaglehole Volume I The Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in Association with Angus and Robertson First published in 1962 Angus & Robertson Ltd 89 Castlereagh Street, Sydney 54–58 Bartholomew Close, London 66 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne 168 Willis Street, Wellington Copyright Set in Monotype Baskerville 11 point Text printed on Burnie Mill Antique Wove Illustrations printed by L. Van Leer and Co., N.V., Amsterdam Printed in Australia by Halstead Press, Sydney Foreword The Sir Joseph Banks Memorial

This book is published by the Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales as the first part of the State's memorial to Sir Joseph Banks. It contains the journal of the voyage with Captain James Cook in the Endeavour, which in April 1770 brought Banks to the eastern shores of Australia.

The Sir Joseph Banks Memorial had its origin in a public meeting held in Sydney on 25th May 1905, under the inspiration of J. H. Maiden, F.R.S. (1859–1925), one of Australia's foremost botanists. The appointment of an executive committee of ten with Sir Francis Suitor as president and Maiden as honorary secretary followed. A fund was subsequently raised, partly by public subscription but mainly by the sale of Maiden's book, Sir Joseph Banks: The “Father of Australia”, which was published in 1909.

The executive committee generally favoured a memorial in the form of a statue and in addition, if funds were sufficient, a university scholarship. However, in 1937 upon the death of Sir Daniel Levy, its last surviving member, the committee ceased to exist. Six years later, when the fund had increased to £1,089 1,089 15s 9d, the Parliament of New South Wales passed the Sir Joseph Banks Memorial Fund Act, 1943, which established a Trust to ‘consider how the fund may be utilized for the purpose of providing a suitable and fitting memorial to perpetuate the memory and services of Sir Joseph Banks’. K. R. Cramp, O.B.E., was chairman of the Trust.

Upon the presentation of the Trust's report, including a minority report, a further Act was passed, the Sir Joseph Banks Memorial Act, 1945, which repealed the Act of 1943 and vested the fund in the Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, upon trust, ‘to apply the same in or towards defraying the cost of editing, publishing and distributing the Banks Papers in a manner and form suitable and fitting to the memory and services of Sir Joseph Banks’. On 8th March, 1946, when the fund was transferred to the Trustees, it amounted to £3,941 14s 3d, including a Government grant of £2,000 and a gift of £500 by Mr E. J. L. (now Sir Edward) Hallstrom.

The Trustees immediately began their primary task of finding an editor with the necessary high qualifications. After a comprehensive survey of the relevant field of scholarship they invited Dr J. C. Beaglehole to assume the task, and he consented to make a beginning of it with an edition of this journal.

Arrangements were then made through the Prime Minister of New Zealand with the result that Victoria University College (now Victoria University of Wellington), generously permitted Dr Beaglehole, as Senior Research Fellow, to undertake the work as part of his normal duties. The Trustees here record their warm thanks to the Government of New Zealand, to the Council of Victoria University College, and to its Principal at that time, the late Sir Thomas Hunter, for their part in enabling Dr Beaglehole thus to act; and they particularly express their appreciation to Dr Beaglehole himself for his determination to make the memorial a worthy one.

The Trustees propose, as time and funds permit, to add to the Sir Joseph Banks Memorial by the publication of further volumes of the Banks Papers, many of which, like his original journal here reproduced, are in their possession.

H. V. Evatt

President of the Trustees

G. D. Richardson

Principal Librarian and Secretary

Preface

The aim of this volume is, primarily, to print the text of Banks's Endeavour journal as carefully edited and annotated as seems adequate to its importance. There is, however, supplementary material. From the great mass of Banks papers that exists in the Mitchell Library and other depositories in Australia and England, a number intimately connected with Banks's part in the voyage are important enough, it is thought, for inclusion as appendices. To these have been added certain other papers, relevant to Banks's refusal to sail on Cook's second voyage. Between about half and three quarters only of the journal has been printed before, and only a very few pages of the appendices; and what has been printed has appeared with various degrees of inaccuracy, whether of deliberate purpose or through carelessness.

An introduction, of some sort, to the journal seemed necessary, to give the reader his bearings. The precise form to be taken by it was not, however, immediately apparent; for the present editor had already dealt at length with the voyage of the Endeavour in an introduction to Cook's own journal;

The Journals of Captain James Cook, Vol. I, Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1955.

and there was a quite vast amount of material that could be drawn on illustrative of Banks. As his figure bulks so largely in the scientific and social history of his time, it was concluded that a general essay on ‘The Young Banks’ might throw some light on the place of the journal in its writer's own development, as well as on his, and consequently on its, relation to that history.

The draft of such an essay, based on the usual secondary sources, although supplemented by the Mitchell Library papers, showed only too clearly the lacunae, the dubieties, and the lack of documentation in the brief biographies that are all that have been vouchsafed to Banks; and much work on manuscript and other material previously used, as well as on the unused, was necessary before any satisfactory story could be told. It is hoped that the essay now printed, tied down as firmly as possible to verifiable references, will not merely do what was first planned for it, but will provide the beginnings of a much-needed new approach to a biographical subject as complex as it is rich. The reader will find a good deal of quotation incorporated, both in the text and in the footnotes. If he is already a student of Banks, some of the passages may seem to him familiar; but they are new, it is hoped, in being printed correctly. The majority of them, like so much else in the book, have not been printed before; and it is hoped, also, that they both illuminate the study in a way otherwise impossible and indicate the nature of the material. It would be too much to hope that the work is immaculate. The ground occupied by Banks in the eighteenth century has had too little attention from the historian, passionately as he has explored the politics and the literature and the scandal of the age, for one to feel more than provisionally satisfied with one's own results.

The papers to which I have had access, apart from the great collection in the Mitchell Library, are widely scattered. By gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen, I have been enabled to use, and to quote from, the Georgian Papers preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor. I am deeply indebted to the owners of other collections, who so immediately and so generously gave me the freedom of them. For such freedom my thanks go to Viscount Hinchingbrooke, M.P.; Lord Brabourne; Sir David Hawley and Dr J. W. F. Hill of Lincoln; Mr Warren R. Dawson, F.R.S.E., F.S.A., of Bletchley, Buckinghamshire (who has helped me also in other ways); and Mr Kenneth A. Webster of London. I am indebted likewise to the librarians who have in their charge Banks and other MSS, and have allowed me to exploit their kindness: namely those of the Commonwealth National Library, Canberra; the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; the Auckland Public Library; the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum; the libraries of the British Museum (Natural History), the Herbarium at Kew, the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; the Sheffield Public Libraries; and the McGill University Library, Montreal.

In the work of annotation I owe further debts. The principal of these, in fields quite beyond my competence—those of natural history—are due to Dr Averil M. Lysaght of London and Professor Joseph Ewan of Tulane University, New Orleans—scholars learned, the one in the zoology, the other in the botany, of the eighteenth century. Without their professional knowledge, and their close acquaintance with the scientific records of the Endeavour voyage, the proper presentation of the journal would have been out of the question. So far as this work is one of scientific interpretation, it is also one of large collaboration, and I am happy to make the fact clear. Dr Lysaght has also been good enough to co-ordinate a great number of suggestions from zoological specialists at the British Museum (Natural History), who have my gratitude: the late Sir Norman Kinnear, Dr H. W. Parker (Keeper of Zoology), Dr G. O. Evans, Dr F. C. Fraser, Dr I. Gordon, Dr J. P. Harding, Mr N. B. Marshall, Dr T. C. S. Morrison-Scott, Mr A. K. Totton, the late Mr Guy L. Wilkins, Mr N. D. Riley (formerly Keeper of Entomology), Mr F. C. Sawyer, and Dr I. H. H. Yarrow. On the botanical side, Mr W. T. Stern and Miss M. R. J. Edwards have been very helpful. In England I owe thanks also to Dr W. R. P. Bourne of Hove. Among New Zealand scholars I am much indebted to the advice of Dr R. A. Falla and his colleagues of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, and to Mr I. L. Thomsen of the Carter Observatory, Wellington; in Australia to Miss Patricia Kott and Dr D. L. Serventy of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, to Mr A. Musgrave of the Australian Museum, Sydney, and to Mr R. H. Anderson, curator of the Botanic Gardens, Sydney. On a number of specific points (not only scientific ones) I have acknowledged help to other friends and informants in the relevant footnotes.

In the fields of linguistics, ethnology and history I have received assistance from Sir Richard Winstedt, F.B.A., Professor C. R. Boxer, of King's College, London, the late Mr J. Frank Stimson of Papeete, Dr Donald S. Marshall of the Peabody Museum of Salem; and in New Zealand, from Mr T. R. Smith, Mr J. M. McEwen, the late Mr Leslie G. Kelly, and the collections of the Dominion Museum. In naval and maritime affairs I have been helped by Mr G. P. B. Naish and Miss Katherine Lindsay-McDougall of the National Maritime Museum; in geographical and cartographical history as well as in other matters—and as always—by Mr R. A. Skelton of the British Museum. For assistance in the selection of illustrations I am obliged to Miss Janet D. Hine and Miss Heather Sherrie; for seemingly interminable typing and re-typing, over a period of years, to Mrs Rita Hollings and Miss Rona Arbuckle, at different times of my University, to Mrs Dorothy I. Croucher, of New Zealand House, London, and to Mrs Ilse Jacoby of Wellington. The index— no inconsiderable matter—is the work of Miss Sherrie. Though I leave to the last the name of Miss Phyllis Mander Jones, lately Mitchell Librarian and now Australian Joint Copying Project Officer in London, I do so but to emphasize my very real obligations, also, for her side of a long correspondence, her own explorations of the Banks papers and Parkinson drawings, and her patience at the ever-new demands I have made upon her energies.

The attention I have paid to the English sources—both in the introduction and in the body of the book—would have been impossible, at a time when it was very much needed, without the Carnegie Commonwealth Fellowship conferred upon me by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies of the University of London in 1955–56; and to the Institute, and to its then Director, Sir Keith Hancock, I tender my heartfelt thanks for the most friendly and generous way in which they allowed me to proceed unimpeded with my own work, dissimilar as it was in time and content from the subjects of seminars to which I might not unjustly have been expected to make some contribution.

Finally I must thank my own University. New Zealand universities are not so well-endowed financially that one of them can easily support a member of its staff whose time is almost entirely devoted to research and publication. I am very conscious of the episode in university history that led to this result in my case, and of my good fortune in my College—as it was for the greater part of the time I have worked on these volumes—and my colleagues. To say more could lead only to cumbrous explanation; to say less would be to do less than justice both to my academic home and to my sense of gratitude.

J. C. Beaglehole

Victoria University of Wellington

October 1959

Contents

Foreword v Preface vii List of Illustrations xiii List of Abbreviations xxvii Introduction: The Young Banks 1 Textual Introduction 127 Printing and Annotation 147

The Journal

I 25 AUGUST 1768- 12 APRIL 1769 153 II 13 APRIL 1769- 14 AUGUST 1769 252 III 15 AUGUST 1769–30 MARCH 1770 387

List of Illustrations Volume I Note

All the illustrations of the journal are taken from drawings—water colour, wash, pen or pencil—by Sydney Parkinson, unless otherwise specified. Most of the originals, when unsigned, can be attributed with a fair amount of confidence.

The topographical and ethnographical drawings are preserved in the British Museum, Department of Manuscripts, Add. MSS 9345, 15508, 23920 and 23921. The only ones not done on the spot during the voyage appear to be those which John Frederick Miller, one of the artists Banks maintained in London, made of the artifacts brought home. They are very carefully and precisely done.

The botanical and zoological drawings are in the British Museum (Natural History), South Kensington, bound up in volumes, 18 in the Botanical Library, 3 in the Zoological Library. Of the botanical volumes there are the following: Madeira 1, Brazil 1, Tierra del Fuego 1, Society Islands (including Tahiti) 3, New Zealand 4, Australia 7, Java 1. The Society Islands volumes are wrongly named on the spine as ‘Friendly Islands’. The zoological volumes are (as named on the spine) 1 Mammalia. Aves. Amphibia, 2 Pisces, 3 Insecta, Vermes. But there are fish in the first volume. The birds have been fully described in Averil Lysaght's excellent Some Eighteenth Century Bird Paintings in the Library of Sir Joseph Banks (British Museum [Natural History] Bulletin, Hist. Series, Vol. I, No. 6, London 1959).

During the earlier part of the voyage Parkinson, by working extremely hard, was able to finish his coloured drawings of plants, though not of zoological subjects; and some of both sorts are quite exquisite. By the time the New Zealand collections came on board, however, he could not keep up, and on the Australian coast he was overwhelmed. He was, it must be remembered, acting also as topographical draughtsman, mainly in wash, and doing the best he could for the figure. Some of his figure drawings, of course, are appallingly amateurish, though they have considerable value outside the artistic; but he could also rise to his Maori heads. The plan he adopted with the plants was to make pencil outlines, add a little colour to indicate the key, and make notes on the back for his guidance in finishing the work later. An example of this is Pl. 16a in Vol. II, Crepis novae-zelandiae. He sometimes was able to make a second, finished drawing himself, but not often. In the end it was Banks's other botanical draughtsmen, Frederick Polydore Nodder, John Frederick Miller, James Miller, and James Cleveley, who in England, over a long period of years, executed the finished water colour drawings, always sticking closely to Parkinson. The work of Nodder is particularly rich. On the back of the unfinished drawings, now bound up with the finished ones, Banks usually himself noted where the plant was found. As the actual plants in their hundreds are still preserved in the Banks herbarium at South Kensington, and Solander's careful descriptions still survive among the MSS there, we have thus a very complete record. It was from the finished drawings that the engravings were made for the great botanical work that Banks failed to publish. The engravings are bound up with the drawings, which they reverse. All the reproductions in the present volumes are from the finished water colours, unless otherwise indicated.

Captions to the plates, where the subjects are botanical or zoological, give the accepted modern scientific names, with the popular or native ones, when known. The other captions follow those of the originals; if it has been necessary to supply one, it has been placed within square brackets. The notes give the source of the individual plate, and whatever information about it seems useful or relevant. Apart from Parkinson and Banks, it is not always easy to identify the writers of notes on the back or the mounts of drawings, though with the differing botanical names one may certainly suspect both Robert Brown and, more recently, Britten, who edited the lithographed edition of the Australian engravings, 1900–5. The sizes given for the botanical and zoological drawings are those of the drawings themselves at their maximum extent; those for the topographical and miscellaneous drawings are the sizes of the sheets on which they are made as now bound up—where they are mounted, between the edges of the mount. Exceptions are noted.

The plates are arranged in roughly chronological order, except for the botanical ones, which form a sort of unity. Departures from either rule are made to avoid oddities in presentation.

The small drawings reproduced in the text, but not listed here, are from Banks's own illustrations in the manuscript.

The sketch-maps have been drawn by Miss Valerie Scott and Mr Bruce Irwin. By kind permission of the President and Council of the Hakluyt Society, they have been adapted from those in the Society's edition of the Journals of Captain James Cook.

Colour Plates

I. Joseph Banks frontispiece From a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Oil on canvas, 50 × 40 in. The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy show of 1773. It is now in the possession of the Hon. Mrs Clive Pearson, of Parham Park, Sussex, by whose kind permission it is reproduced. II. Bougainvillea spectabilis Willd facing p.196 Brazil, 24. 36.5 × 23.5 cm. Titled ‘Calyxis-ternaria’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1768.’ Banks has added the name ‘Brasil’ to the bottom right corner. Later inscriptions in pencil are ‘Bougainvillea’ and ‘Buginvillea spectabilis Willd[enow]’. III. Berberis ilicifolia Forst.f. facing p. 244 Tierra del Fuego 7. 37.1 × 23.5 cm. Titled ‘Berberissempivirens’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ In a later hand ‘sempivirens’ has been lightly scored through in pencil and ‘ilicifolia Forst.’ substituted above. IV. Hibiscus abelmoschus L. facing p. 260 Society Islands I, 15. 39.5 × 25.4 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ In the bottom right corner the pencil note in Banks's hand ‘Otahite’. V. Barringtonia speciosa J. R. & G. Forst. facing p. 292 Society Islands I, 57. 41.1 × 20.3 cm. Unsigned. The name ‘Barringtonia speciosa Willd.’ is written in pencil in a later hand. The mount bears the title ‘Agasta splendida Miers. On the back are faint pencil notes, ‘Mem the stamina are made rather too short’, ‘56 Butonica splendida’, and, in ink by Banks, ‘Otahite’. There are also two unfinished pencil drawings, Nos. 56 and 58, with notes on the back: 56 ‘Butonica splendida’, and 58, ‘The fruit is bright grass green when dry dark brown’. VI. Spondias dulcis Forst.f. Vi or Vi apple facing p. 308 Society Islands I, 30. 45.5 × 28.8 cm. (The height includes the inset drawing of inflorescence.) Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’; pencilled note by Banks, ‘Otaheite’. VIIa. Zebrasoma flavescens Bennett? facing p. 356 Zoological II, Pisces 22a. 7.4 × 8.3 cm. Unsigned. Name ‘Chaetodon an militans’ lower right, in Banks's (?) hand. On the back the pencil notes by Banks, ‘No. 32. Zeus elevatus/ Erapepe’; by Parkinson, ‘Taumatus, the same name with their [word illegible]’; and by Solander, in ink, ‘Otahite’. VIIb. Zanclus cornutus (L.) Moorish Idol facing p. 356 Zool. II, 29a. 14 × 9.6 cm. Unsigned, but Dryander has written in lower left, ‘S. Parkinson’. Pencil notes: lower left, '+ ch. Cornutias’; by Parkinson lower right, ‘Tátèhee’ (apparently the island name of the fish), and above the fish, ‘pale blue’. On the back, by Parkinson, ‘there is of this fish as large again’; by Banks, ‘No 21 Chaetodon rostratus’; and by Solander, in ink, ‘Otahite’. VIIc. Rhinecanthus aculeatus (L.) facing p. 356 Zool. I, Mammalia. Aves. Amphibia, 59. 8.9 × 17.6 cm. Name ‘S. Parkinson’ in Dryander's hand lower left corner. Lower right, in pencil in Banks's hand, the name ‘Balist aculeatus L.’ and the further names, ‘oidē / Oethi / Oiwe tea’. On the back the pencil note by Parkinson, ‘The colours on the back soften'd in the Orange & purple bright’; by Banks, ‘N0 50 Balistes ornatus’; and by Solander, in ink, ‘Otahite’. VIIIa. Anisochaetodon falcula (Bloch) Butterfly-fish facing p. 372 Zool. II, 22b. 7 × 10 cm. Name in Dryander's hand, ‘S. Parkinson’. Title written later on recto, ‘Ch.falcula (ulietensis, C.V.)’. On the back the pencil note, ‘No. 67 The fish lost’; another note, on colours, some of which is erased and the rest illegible; and in ink, by Banks, ‘Ulhietea’. VIIIb. Anisochaetodon vagabundus (L.) Butterfly-fish facing p. 372 Zool. II, 30. 9.6 × 15.3 cm. Name in Dryander's hand, ‘S. Parkinson’. Near the tail of the fish is a pencil note by Parkinson, ‘dark chesnut’, and on the lower right, ‘Paraha’; elsewhere on the recto, by others, ‘Ch. vagabundus’, ‘chaet. speciosus Mss/Paraharaha/[word illegible]’; on the back, by Banks, ‘No. 48. Chaetodon aulicus’, and by Solander, in ink, ‘Otahite’. VIIIc. Megaprotodon strigangulus (Gm.) ? Butterfly-fish facing p. 372 Zool. II, 23b. 6.3 × 12 cm. Name in Dryander's hand, ‘S. Parkinson’. The pencilled name, abbreviated on recto, ‘Ch[aetodon] strigangulus’, is repeated on the back in full, with the note in ink by Banks, ‘Otahite’. IX. Clianthus puniceus Banks & Soland. ex Lindl. Kaka Beak facing p. 420 New Zealand I, 104. 46.8 × 29.6 cm. Unsigned. An unfinished drawing has one flower and a leaf or two coloured, and a pencil note on the back, ‘The capsula a bright yellow green / 118 Clianthus puniceus’. X. Fuchsia excorticata Linn.f. Kotukutuku or Tree Fuchsia facing p. 436 New Zealand I, 162. 47 × 27.5 cm. Signed James Miller pinxt. 1775.’ On the back are the pencil notes ‘Agapanthus calyciflorus’ and ‘Tegadu’ (Anaura Bay). On the back of the unfinished drawing, No. 161, is the note, ‘The calyx deep Crimson on the inside as are also the filaments & stile the top of which is yellow The petals dark purple the outside of the calyx paler & ting'd wt green anthera yellow ting'd wt red the upper part of the leaves dark grass green the under part white wt a cast of green & vein'd wt green the capsula green the stalk gray green’.

Illustrations to the Introduction

i. Solander facing p. 36 Blue and white medallion by Wedgwood and Bentley, 3¼ × 2½ in. From a model by Flaxman? ii. Sydney Parkinson facing p. 52 From the engraving by James Newton, frontispiece to Parkinson's Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, 1773; 24.5 × 18.5 cm. iii. Mr. Banks facing p. 68 Mezzotint engraving by J. R. Smith after the portrait by Benjamin West, R.A., 57.3 × 38 cm. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1773, but its whereabouts are now unknown. The mezzotint was published 15 April 1773. iv. Banks and Solander facing p. 84 From ‘shadows’ by James Lind. Lind, in a letter from Edinburgh to Banks, dated 2 March 1775 (now in the collection of Mr Kenneth A. Webster), writes, ‘I have lately finished for Miss Burnet, in a neat Oval frame a couple of Shadows done in crayons, the one of you, and the other of Doctor Solander, of the same size as the outlines on the other side [of his paper], which look tolerably well…. If Miss Bank[s] will accept of a couple of Shadows done in the same [manner] as these I did for Miss Burnet I will do myself the honour of sending them’. The reproduction is from the letter. For some of Lind's activities with silhouettes see an article by F. Gordon Roe, ‘A Forgotten Group of Profilists’, in Apollo, XXII (1935), pp. 287–9. v. Omai, Banks and Solander facing p. 116 From a painting by William Parry, A.R.A. (1742 ?-91). Oil on canvas, 59 × 59 in. Omai in a white robe, Banks in a grey suit, Solander in a red coat. Parry returned to England from Italy in 1775, and the picture must date from that year or the first half of 1776, before Omai left England with Cook. Reproduced by kind permission of Brigadier Charles Hilary Vaughan, D.S.O. vi. The first page of the Journal facing p. 132 From the MS in the Mitchell Library, 23.2 × 18 cm.

Plates at the end of the Volume

1a. Munida gregaria (Fabr.) Zool. III, Insecta Vermes 9. 13.5 × 8.1 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’, and with title ‘Cancer gregarius.’ Note by Banks in ink on back, ‘Janry 2nd 1769 / Lat. 37.30.’ 1b. Glaucus atlanticus (Forst.) Zool. III, 23.9 × 17.5 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt ad vivum 1768’, and with title ‘Mimus-Volutator’. Note by Banks in ink on back, ‘Octr 4.1768 / Lat. 11.00.N.’ 2. Motacilla flava L. Zool. I, Mammalia. Aves. Amphibia 38a. 15.7 × 20.4 cm. The title on the drawing is ‘Motacilla-avida’. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1768’. Note by Banks in ink on back, ‘Septr 28.1768 / Lat. 19.00 north.’ The bird is a young one. 3. Volatinia jacarina (L.) Blue-black Grassquit Zool. I, 37b. 24 × 19.5 cm. Entitled ‘Loxia-nitens’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt ad vivum. 1768’. Note by Banks in lower right corner, ‘Brasil’. Note by Banks in ink on back, ‘of the coast of Brasil Novr 8th 1768’. 4. A View of the Endeavour's Watering-place in the Bay of Good Success Add. MS 23920, f. 11b. Water colour drawing, 25.1 × 34 cm. Signed ‘A. Buchan Delint’ 5. An Indian Town at Terra del Fuego Add. MS 23920, f.12. Wash drawing, 24.2 × 34.1 cm. Signed ‘A. Buchan. Delint’. 6. Phaethon rubricauda Gm. Red-tailed Tropic Bird Zool. I, 31a. 23.3 × 21.7 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ Underneath the signature is written in pencil ‘Tawai’ [Tava'e] Phaeton.erubescens’. 7. [Tahiti] View of the Fort from the Rock within the Reef Add. MS 23921, f. 2b. Pencil drawing, 15.2 × 32.2 cm. Unsigned, but the work and the writing of the title indicate Spöring. Pencil note by Banks on the paper ‘our little Encampment in Otaheite’, repeated on the mount. 8. View of the Coast & Reef in the district of Papavia Add. MS 23921, f.7a. Wash drawing, unsigned, by Parkinson, 14.9 × 23.9 cm. A large pandanus on a cliff in foreground, on right double canoe with ‘deck-house’ being paddled, in middle distance canoe shelter, native dwellings, sailing canoe and coconut trees, in background hills and sailing canoes. 9a. [Tahiti. A Group of Musicians] Add. MS 15508, f.10b. Crude drawing, with some water colour, by an unknown executant, on a sheet 26.9 × 36.9 cm. The group itself measures c. 9.6 × 20.8 cm. Two musicians, dressed in the maro, are playing nose-flutes, and two, in the tiputa, playing drums. 9b. [Tahitian Scene] Add. MS 15508, f.12. Crude watercolour drawing, by an unknown executant (possibly the artist of f.10b.), 26.8 × 37 cm. The drawing is unfinished, with a number of figures still in pencil outline. In the foreground three canoes, two with fighting-stages in the bows, one with sails and outrigger. In the background a ‘long house’ or arioi house; and trees—left to right a pandanus, a bread-fruit, bananas, a coconut, a tree hard to identify, a taro plant, what is possibly a young casuarina, more coconuts and bananas, and a small pandanus. 10. [Tahiti] Men's and Women's Dress Add. MS 23921, f.36b. and e. Pencil sketches by Parkinson, 18.9 × 15.3 cm. and 16.7 × 15.2 cm. On the sheet on which the sketches are mounted is written ‘Otaheite’ and ‘Sketches of Inhabitants’. The man is tying a sash round his tapa overgarment or tiputa, and is wearing what may be either a pareu or a maro underneath; the woman is wearing a tiputa over a pareu. 11a. [Making Tapa] Woman scraping bark Add. MS 23921, f.50a. Pencil sketch by Parkinson, unsigned, 16.3 × 20.6 cm. Note at bottom right in Banks's hand, ‘woman scraping bark to make cloth S[outh?] S[ea?]’. 11b. [Making Tapa] Woman beating cloth Add. MS 23921, f.50b. Pencil sketch by Parkinson, unsigned, 20.1 × 23.1 cm. Note at bottom right in Banks's hand, ‘women beating cloth’; and a note in ink on the mounting sheet, ‘Girls beating out the Bark with their Cloth beaters’. Both these drawings are much foxed. 12. [Tahiti] Sketches of Dancing Girls Add. MS 23921, f.38b. Pencil sketch by Parkinson, unsigned, 12.2 × 29.8 cm. In addition to the ceremonial tapa garments the girls are wearing head-dresses of taamu, or plaited hair. 13. [Tahiti] Distortions of the Mouth used in Dancing Add. MS 23921, f.51a and b. Pencil sketches by Parkinson, unsigned, both 19 × 16.3 cm. On the back of 51a is a pencil sketch of tattoo-design on the buttocks. 14. A Tupapow in the Island of Otaheite Add. MS 23921, f.31a. Wash drawing 23.7 × 37.4 cm., unsigned. On the back of the drawing is written in pencil ‘Ewhatta no te tuobapaow’ (spelling of last word conjectural)—i.e. e fata no te tupapau. A roofed platform with a fence round it; the corpse lies covered with tapa. In the foreground a ‘chief mourner’ in ceremonial dress; young coconuts planted out, a mature coconut with a boy climbing for the nuts, and a tree (Erythrina ?) with a man sitting at its base. 15. [Tahiti] Dress of the Chief Mourner Add. MS 23921, f.32. Pencil drawing 23.1 × 18.7 cm., unsigned, probably by Spöring. See p. 288. 16. A platform for supporting the offerings made to the Dead Add. MS 23921, f.29b. Wash drawing 23.6 × 37 cm., unsigned. The platform is hung round with cloth, and on it rests a bunch of bananas. Banana trees left foreground and behind, and a coconut middle foreground with a yam vine climbing it. 17. View in Ulietea Add. MS 23921, f.11. Wash drawing 23.6 × 37.3 cm., unsigned. A canoe-house with a large double canoe in it, in the foreground a man carrying coconuts on a stick over his shoulder, and two men in a small outrigger canoe. Various trees and plants, and hills in the background. 18. Canoe of Ulietea Add. MS 23921, f.20. Wash drawing 30 × 48.1 cm., unsigned. A two-masted double canoe with sails raised; two shelters built on the deck, one shading a tapa-wrapped child; men dressed in the maro kneeling on ropes; other children, one holding a pig, another drinking from a coconut; a woman leaning on the forward shelter, fowls on the aft one. Other sailing canoes in the background. In lower right corner, three Reef Herons, Demigretta sacra. 19. Vessels of the Island of Otaha Add. MS 23921, f.17. Wash drawing 30 × 47.8 cm., unsigned. Left foreground, men and women fishing, one woman nude, with topknot hair-dressing and tattooed buttocks. Right foreground, man paddling raft with coconuts. Middle, small outrigger canoe and large double sailing canoe, with tapa-dressed men and women, fruit, gourd containers, etc. Further canoes in background, hills, and atmospheric effect of sun shining through clouds. ‘Otaha’=Tahaa. 20. Construction of Canoes Add. MS 23921, f.23b. Pencil drawings of various details of canoe construction, 27.4 × 22.3 cm., unsigned. Hulls with cross-sections, ‘deck-house’, paddle, mast and rigging. Annotations in Banks's hand. 21. [Tahitian Tattoo-designs] Add. MS 23921, f.51c verso, ink drawing 19.7 × 32.1 cm. The drawing shows the tattooing of the buttocks. See pp. 335.6. 22a. [Tahitian Weapons] Add. MS 23921, f.57b. Wash drawing 20.4 × 16.5 cm. Signed ‘J.F.Miller: del.’; drawn in England from artifacts brought home by Banks. (1) Sting of a ray, used for a spear-point; (2) bow (3) arrow (4) quiver of bamboo. The bow and arrow were not strictly speaking a weapon, but rather ‘sporting equipment’. 22b. [South Sea Fish-hooks] Add. MS 15508, f.25. Wash drawing 20.5 × 16.5 cm. Signed ‘John Frederick Miller. del.’ Underneath the drawing are pencil notes by Banks identifying the artifacts: ‘1. Decoy to Catch Cuttle fish from Otaheite 2. Hook of Nacre shell from D0 3. D0 of mother of Pearl from D0 4. D0 of Wood & bone from New Zeland.’ 23a. [Tapa Beater and Adze] Add. MS 15508, f.30. Wash drawing 20.5 × 16.6 cm. Unsigned. Under the drawing is a pencil note by Banks, ‘Tools of the South Sea Isles / a instrument with which they beat out their cloth / b. Hatchet or axe’. A further note gives the size (height) of the beater as 1’ 3” and of the adze as 1’ 11”. 23b. [South Sea Artifacts] Add. MS 15508, f.31. Wash drawing 20.1 × 16.4 cm. Signed ‘J.F. Miller. 1771’. A pencil note by Banks beneath the drawing lists the articles: ‘Tools &c. from the South Sea Isles / a a flute / b Pestle of Stone to beat down their victuals into a soft paste which is looked upon by them as a delicacy / c small Hatchet the blade of which being taken off [serves erased] a chizzel / d Thatching needle / e Chizzel made of human bone’. 24. Diospyros lotus L. Madeira 17. 25.8 × 20.2 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1768.’ The word ‘Linn.’, added in ink to the title on the picture, appears to be in Banks's hand. 25. Pereskia sp. Brazil 1. 18.3 × 30.3 cm. Titled ‘Clusia-dodecapetala’, and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ On the back is the pencilled note, ‘Mem the stamina to be done with Gamboge the stalks &calix green’. 26. Tillandsia stricta Soland. ex Sims Brazil 33. 27.9 × 19 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ 27a. Apium prostratum Labill. Wild Celery Tierra del Fuego 58.41 × 26.2 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ This is the Apium antarcticum of the Banks and Solander MSS. 27b. Drimys winteri J. R. & G. Forst. Winter's Bark Tierra del Fuego 6.33 .3 × 21 cm. Titled ‘Winterana-aromatica’, and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ 28. Pernettya mucronata Gaud. Tierra del Fuego 100. 27 × 21.5 cm. Titled ‘Arbutus, rigida’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ Above ‘rigida’ in the title has been written in pencil ‘mucronata, Linn.fil.’ 29. Crataeva religiosa Forst.f. Puaraau Society Islands I, 5. 45.5 × 29 cm. (part of the drawing has been trimmed off). Titled ‘Crataeva frondosa’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ In the lower right-hand corner is a pencil note in Banks's hand, ‘Otahite’; and on the back the following: ‘The flowers that come last out are quite white gaining the purple colour by degrees. The underside of the leaves the same colour as the upper—The capsule is dark green being all cover'd with warts of dirty white’. 30. Gardenia taitensis DC. Tiare Society Islands I, 82. 40.6 × 27.2 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ Titled ‘Gardenia-florida’, and with a pencil note by Banks, 'Otahite’. The leaf on the right has been trimmed. 31. Jasminum didymum Forst.f. Tia-tia mana Society Islands I, 90. 42.2 × 26.2 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’, with pencil note by Banks ‘Otaheite’. The leaf on the right has been trimmed. 32. Artocarpus communis J. R. & G. Forst. Uru or Bread-fruit Society Islands II, 180.35 × 28.7 cm. Titled ‘Sitodium-altile.’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ Over the title is written in pencil, ‘Artocarpus incisa L.fil’, and beneath it a pencil note by Banks (?), ‘Otaheite’. There are two other similar drawings of this plant: (1) No. 179, Unnamed but with pencil note, ‘The leaves dark grass green wt pale yellow green veins the underside pale green wt prominent veins, the male flower and spatha pale yellow green, the fruit a yellow green’; (2) No. 181, Sepia drawing signed ‘John Frederick Miller. del.’ 33a. Ficus tinctoria Forst. Mati Society Islands II, 167. 39.1 × 26 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’; pencil note by Banks [?], ‘Otaheite’. 33b. Cordia subcordata Lam. Tou Society Islands I, 100.42.1 × 28.6 cm. Titled ‘Cordia-Sebestena’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’; a pencil note by Banks, ‘Otahite’. The leaves have been trimmed at the sides. 34a. Calophyllum inophyllum L. Tamanu Society Islands I, 10. 41.7 × 28.5 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ Beneath the title is the pencil note ‘Uahine’ in Banks's hand. The leaf on the left has been trimmed. 34b. Morinda citrifolia L. Nono Society Islands I, 77.42 × 28.8 cm. Signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769’; and with a pencil note ‘Ulhietea’. 35. Tacca leontopetaloides (L.) O. Ktze. Pia Society Islands II, 206. 43.5 × 28.8 cm. Titled ‘Chaitæa-Tacca’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’; a pencil note by Banks, ‘Ulhietea’. The sheet has been trimmed at the top and sides. The wash drawing of the details of the capsule is on a separate piece of paper pasted down. The name of the plant usually accepted has been Tacca pinnatifida Forst. 36. Piper methysticum Forst.f. Ava Society Islands II, 139. 37.8 × 25 cm. Titled ‘Piper-inebrians’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769.’ Pencil note under title, ‘Ulhietea’. 37. Merremia peltata (L.) Merr. Society Islands II, 106.43 × 27.7 cm. Titled ‘Convolvulus peltatus’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769’; a pencil note by Banks, ‘Ulhitea’. 38. Cyanoramphus zealandicus (Latham). Red-rumped Parrot Zool. I, 8. 17.6 × 17.5 cm. Ascribed by Dryander (no doubt correctly) to Parkinson. The right leg and claws and the branch on which the bird is perched are indicated only in pencil. A later pencil note at the bottom of the sheet gives the name as ‘Psittacus pacificus’; and a note at the bottom right, by Parkinson, gives its island name as ‘Aã’ (A'a). The present specific name was given by Latham (1790), who erroneously thought New Zealand was the bird's habitat. It was confined to Tahiti, and was last collected in 1844, about which time presumably it became extinct. On the back are the notes in ink, (1) by Banks, ‘No. 5. Green Peroquet’, and (2) by Solander, ‘Otahite’. 39. Vini peruviana (P.L.S.Müller). Tahitian Blue Lory Zool. I, 9. 11.9 × 15 cm. Unsigned pencil drawing, ascribed by Dryander to Parkinson. A pencil note by Parkinson on the front reads, ‘Avinne’. On the back he has written, ‘The face throat & breast white the rem/ & rec/. dirty grey turng blue towards the edge the feet & beak a bright Orange Claws black all the rest of the body— wt dark Ultra-. shaded wt P.B. like shining steell.’; and a note by Banks, ‘N03, Blue Perroquet / Otahite’.—In Parkinson's note ‘rem/ & rec/.’ = ‘remiges & rectrices’, i.e. flight feathers and tail feathers. 40a. Acantherocybium solandri (C.V.) Zool. II, 87.6 × 39.5 cm. Titled ‘Scomber-lanceolatis’ and signed ‘Sydney Parkinson pinxt 1769’. Below the signature is a note in pencil by Banks(?), ‘Tatea’, and below that Parkinson's note in ink, ‘Mem. one Pinulae spuriæ is wanting above & one below.’ On the back is the pencil note by Banks, ‘off thrum cap. Island’. 40b. Plectorhinchus orientalis (Bloch) Zool. II, 77. 10.3 × 24 cm. Ascribed by Dryander to Parkinson. The name ‘Tairhepha’ (Tairifa) is pencilled below the drawing. On the back are the notes (1) by Banks (?), ‘N0 45. Percoides pica’; (2) by Parkinson, ‘The parts mark'd thus × are white inclining to gray especialy on the finns & on the face reddish, those marked wt [a sign not possible to print] are black the scales edge'd wt dirty white, the iris gold colour pupil black.’; (3) by Solander, ‘Otahite’. The marks referred to by Parkinson are not visible on the drawing, and were presumably removed when it was coloured.

Sketch Maps

1. Matavai Bay page 254 2. Tahiti 262 3. The Endeavour in the Society Islands 315 4. New Zealand, North Island and part of South Island 398 5. New Zealand, South Island 466

Abbreviations Used in Notes to the Introduction

ALS Autograph letter signed (MS so classified in the Alexander Turnbull Library). ATL Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. CAMERON H. C. Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks. London, 1952. D.T.C. Dawson Turner Copies of Banks correspondence in the Botanical Library of the British Museum (Natural History), South Kensington, London. Edward Smith Edward Smith, Life of Sir Joseph Banks. London, 1911. Hawkesworth John Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages undertaken by order of his present Majesty for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere…. London, 1773. (Vols II and III are devoted to the voyage of the Endeavour.) J.E.S. Sir James Edward Smith (editor), A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus, and other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts. 2 vols, London, 1821. Kew B.C. Manuscript Banks correspondence in the Library of the Herbarium, Kew. ML Mitchell Library. S.S.B. Sarah Sophia Banks. ‘Voluntiers’ A Volume of Banks papers in the Mitchell Library, lettered ‘Voluntiers, Instructions, Provision for 2d. Voyage’.

Introduction The Young Banks

What shall we call the eighteenth century? How often, and how vainly, has it been summarized in a phrase! — stuffed into a single garment, as it were, from which it bursts at every seam, its uncontrollable, magnificent, startling life forcing itself upon the eye of the beholder in lavish and indecent contradiction. It was an Age, there seems no doubt of that — the Age of the Despots, of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, of Oratory, of Gin, the Mercantilist Age, the Age of the Augustans, the Age of Rococo, the Age of Johnson. There can be no harm, thinking of England, to which Johnson so immediately and forthrightly brings us, in conferring another name, no more nor less adequate: let us call those busy decades — or a sufficient selection of them — the Age of the Gentleman Amateur. For the century was, in so much of its activity, pre-professional. One must not say merely dilettante: that would be unjust. In the first place, the word has subtly changed its meaning; in the second, though the dilettante throve, never did he have a choicer field for his activity; never did dilettantism become, as with Horace Walpole, so exquisitely almost professional in itself. But no one would call dilettanti those men of profound scientific activity, Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish, any more than one would call this nonconformist minister and this recluse of a ducal family professional scientists. Was Lord Burlington merely dilettante in architecture, or Gibbon in history, or Gilbert White in natural history ? Or Arthur Young in agriculture, or that equally assiduous traveller, Thomas Pennant, in zoology, or in the free field of general observation and antiquities ? And for how many hundreds of the obscure do these large figures stand! — the country parsons devoted to local history, in at the birth, almost, of British archaeology; the scholars who had escaped from the common room and the port; the nobility who had no taste for gaming or politics — though was not politics itself, whatever its savagery and cupidity, its attraction for men on the make, still one of the great preserves of the Gentleman Amateur?

Science, above all, apart from politics, it is that comes to the aid of a generalization that may often seem to totter dangerously: there is so much that rushes forth as contrary evidence in literature and art and architecture, in theology and even in prize-fighting. Science had not been organized, Science was not at all professional and most imperfectly academic; Science, as we know it today, was almost at the beginning of things; and yet Science was popular. The educated classes of England, as of France, made it a cult; that most unscientific figure Dr Johnson was throughout his life given to ‘chemical experiments’. True, in the mid-century it was long since Sir Isaac Newton's Principia had begun to send its ceaseless eddies through the European mind; true, by 1760 the Royal Society had enjoyed a hundred years of irregularly scientific life; but even the Royal Society was predominantly a society of Gentlemen, and of amateurs. Science, indeed, as Priestley tinkered with his apparatus, and Cavendish plumbed new depths of analytic thought, and Western Civilization sailed in ships bearing the beneficent gifts of Commerce and of War to the uttermost bounds of the earth, saw empires expanding which had before been only a dream. Empires were for conquest, arduous but exhilarating: to the votaries of the descriptive, of geography, of zoology, of botany, how fair the prospect! How almost intoxicating the scene on which the natural historian could look forth, the young disciple of Linnaeus! — for it is that light, famous, venerable, omnipresent, that shines above our travellers, that presence that irradiates their farthest wanderings; there in Uppsala is the centre and bosom of learning from which, almost, all proceeds, to which all returns. To be the pupil of Linnaeus, his friend, his correspondent, his informant — this was to be sealed with the seal of a new virtue, this was to be enlisted under a banner, to be one of a brotherhood, to have a master and a father, and in Nature an intellectual home. Not even the great Buffon ever stood in quite this relation with European science. Should we, then, speak of the Age of Linnaeus? We might do worse; but it does not really matter. What matters was that science was both widening and deepening the scope of its command: not always with true learning, sometimes almost accidentally — led sometimes from old myth to new myth, undermining new as well as old with new experience. And now rose up, indeed, within Natural History, something new, something incomparably exciting, Man in the state of nature: the Noble Savage entered the study and the drawing-room of Europe in naked majesty, to shake the preconceptions of morals and of politics. He was not, it is true, universally admired, and behind him came illimitable files of savages something less than noble, insufficiently elegant, beings whose natural state caused the philosopher embarrassment. There were cultivated persons who, like Horace Walpole, were not entertained: scholars who, like Dr Johnson, refused to be instructed. But the science of ethnology was born.

So, on the scene of our scrutiny, into this busy age, steps the figure of Joseph Banks, the gifted, the fortunate youth: enthusiastic, curious, the voyager, the disciple of Linnaeus, the botanist and zoologist, the devotee of savages; not yet, as one examines his early career, a Public Figure, but certainly a Gentleman, certainly a figure typical of his age; and certainly as much as anyone, and more than most, the Gentleman Amateur of Science.

Joseph Banks came from that enviable class the landed gentry; close enough to the land to draw common sense from it, and with enough of it to draw from it also a handsome revenue; with brains enough, indeed, unlike some country gentry, to repay education, and with wealth more than enough to allow of a town as well as country existence, and of a standing in society which no mere rural squire could claim. The family was a Lincolnshire one; its seat was Revesby Abbey, not far from Boston; as the fens were drained its wealth increased, and intelligent management made its standing still greater.

For the outline of Banks's ancestry here given, I have relied on his own notes, now in the possession of Mr Warren R. Dawson, Dawson MS 47. They are filled out in Dr J. W. F. Hill's excellent introduction to his edition of the Letters and Pabers of the Banks Family of Revesby Abbey 1704–1760, Lincoln Record Society, Vol. 45 (Lincoln 1952).

Joseph's seventeenth century great-grandfather, another Joseph, was not merely wealthy, from his business as an attorney and from property transactions, but a member of parliament, for Grimsby and then for Totnes, and — we begin to see something of his descendant — an antiquary. His son, also Joseph, also an antiquary, also a member of parliament — for Peterborough — rebuilt Revesby church, served as sheriff of the county, and was a fellow of the Royal Society. This Joseph's son Joseph died in his twenties, unmarried, so that it was a William, a second son, who next came to the estate — member for Grampound, deputy-lieutenant of Lincolnshire, an agricultural improver, whose favourite pursuit, said his son, was drainage — i.e. drainage of the fens. William does not seem to have shone in antiquarian or other intellectual pursuits, but we can see a sort of family pattern. It is a respectable pattern, of service to, as well as profit from, the land, of prominent public duties met in the conventional way, of intelligent interest in affairs, of some mild feeling for learning. The hereditary cell-structure which lay behind the disposition of this respectable pattern was perhaps given a slight twist by the marriage of William Banks to Sarah, eldest daughter of William Bate of Derbyshire, in 1741; for while we can see the same elements in the make-up of the next Joseph, who was born on 13 February 1743,

There has been a little confusion, to which Banks himself unwittingly contributed, over the date of his birth. In the latest life, Dr H. C. Cameron's Sir Joseph Banks (London 1952), p. I, n., the date is given as ‘February 2nd, 1743 O.S.’ and Cameron adds, ‘Lord Brougham, in giving the correct date and place, tells us that he has it “from a note in his own hand which lies before me”. This note may possibly be one of the memoranda now in the possession of Mr Warren Dawson, which Dr Cameron quotes (p. 284) as ‘Born 1743 Feb 2nd old style….’ But ‘February 2nd, 1743 O.S.’ would be 13 February 1744 New Style; and it is evident that Banks intended his ‘old style’ to apply merely to the day of the month, not to the year. This is borne out by a birth-certificate, now in the Public Library, Dunedin, New Zealand, copied from the register of the church of St James, Westminster, and dated 15 November 1753. This gives the date of birth as 2 February 1742—i.e. O.S. (the modern, or Gregorian, calendar was not adopted in Great Britain till 1752). Notes at the bottom of the document in Banks's hand begin ‘Born Feb 13 1743’ (i.e. N.S.), and go on to the dates of his entry to Harrow, Eton and Oxford, as given below.

in Argyle Street, Westminster, something has happened. With this new Joseph, everything is intensified, though the parliamentary tradition is broken: intelligence both deepens and widens, the affairs which claim his interest are practically everything except politics, interest becomes organization; the moderation of the polite antiquary is transformed into a consuming devotion to natural history, the travels from Lincolnshire to London become travels round the world, the county magnate becomes an international figure. One of the queer English excursions into individuality has happened. There has been also, it seems, a rise in the family's social fortunes: a sister of William Banks, Margaret, the delightful and radiant beauty Peggy Banks, for whom the Duke of Cumberland panted to give balls, married the Honourable Henry Grenville, and so came into a formidably aristocratic connection; her only child, Louisa, our Joseph's cousin, became the second wife of the third Earl Stanhope; and Sarah Banks's sister Hannah Sophia, Joseph's aunt on his maternal side, was the wife of the eighth Earl of Exeter. A child not himself born into ermine could hardly hope for more excellent connections. If he could have asked anything else of the gods, he might have asked for charm. He did not need to: that also they had given him. They gave him, to complete his felicity, in the year after that of his own birth, a sister as individual as himself, Sarah Sophia; and their individualities did not clash. William and Sarah Banks had no further children; but they had not done badly by the eighteenth century.

We know little enough of the earliest years of Joseph. Presumably they were largely spent at Revesby, where fresh air, the open fields, and plentiful play laid the foundations of a remarkably tough constitution, and private tutoring gave him sufficient educational grounding to take him to Harrow, in April 1752, at the age of nine. Thence, either to get the best of both worlds, or because of invincible opposition to learning in the Harrovian atmosphere — for, to quote his later friend, Henry Brougham, ‘Joe cared mighty little for his book’ — he was in September 1756 removed to Eton. A pleasant good-tempered boy he continued to be, but it was with extreme satisfaction that his tutor found him one day, at the age of fourteen, reading and not sporting in his hours of leisure. He was not, however, we may judge, reading in the classics; Joseph always trod a perilous path in the learned languages — if in a rash moment he ventured into that country at all. Something more important had happened: he had undergone a sort of conversion. He gave his own account of this, late in his life, to Sir Everard Home the surgeon, who transmitted it to posterity.

In his Hunterian oration, 1822; reprinted by Cameron, Appendix D, particularly pp. 297–8.

Joseph, river-bathing with his friends one fine summer evening, had lingered beyond them in the water; when he came out they were all gone and he dawdled back to school by himself along a flowery lane. Solitude, the flowers, perhaps the evening light, had their effect: ‘he stopped and looking round, involuntarily exclaimed, How beautiful! After some reflection, he said to himself, it is surely more natural that I should be taught to know all these productions of Nature, in preference to Greek or Latin; but the latter is my father's command and it is my duty to obey him; I will however make myself acquainted with all these different plants for my own pleasure and gratification. He began immediately to teach himself Botany’, with the assistance of the women who gathered simples for the apothecaries’ shops, paying sixpence for every valuable piece of information he got from them. Home for the holidays, he found in his mother's dressing-room an old and battered copy of Gerard's Herbal, with its woodcuts of the very plants he knew; he carried it back to school in triumph; ‘and it was probably this very book that he was poring over when detected by his tutor, for the first time, in the act of reading’. One branch of natural history led to another (the dutiful sense of his father's command felt by Joseph, we may suppose, sat but lightly on the enthusiast), already he had a power of persuasion with his fellows; ‘his whole time out of school was given up to hunting after plants and insects,’ writes Lord Brougham, the son of one of his schoolmates, ‘making a hortus siccus of the one, and forming a cabinet of the other. As often as Banks could induce [my father] to quit his task in reading or in verse-making, he would take him on his long rambles; and I suppose it was from this early taste that we had at Brougham so many butterflies, beetles, and other insects, as well as a cabinet of shells and fossils’.

Brougham, Lives of Men of Letters and Science in the Reign of George III, II (London 1846), p. 340.

In 1760 he went home from school to be inoculated against smallpox. The time taken by this was so great that when he had recovered it was thought his next step might well be not back to Eton but forward to Oxford — which, though not, quite obviously, his spiritual home, was at least a home for gentlemen; and he was accordingly at the end of the year entered at Christ Church as a gentleman commoner.

He matriculated 16 December 1760.

There he rapidly made a reputation as one ignorant of Greek; equally rapidly he came to a determination that though he was shunned as a classicist he would be consulted as a natural historian. But where to turn for higher instruction in the science which he had so far pursued with cullers of simples and in the Elizabethan pages of Gerard? The academic months were passing by. Oxford had a professor of botany, but nothing was farther from the professorial chair than the idea that its occupant might give instruction in the subject that he professed. Humphrey Sibthorp is not to be blamed; the idea was foreign to every other person as well, and it may indeed be esteemed an excess of educational devotion that he did give one lecture in thirty-five years. To the odd situation which young Mr Banks forced upon him, and to his own character, we owe one of the most masterly statements of irony in the English language — unless, as is conceivable, Lord Brougham had no talent for irony, and was simply being sincere. For when, we are told, Banks ‘applied to the learned doctor for leave to engage a lecturer, whose remuneration should be wholly defrayed by his pupil … it is highly creditable to the professor, and shows his love of the science, in which some of his family afterwards so greatly excelled, that he at once agreed to the proposal’.

ibid., p. 341.

He did more than signify his agreement: since there was no person eligible to teach botany in Oxford, he provided the aspiring youth with a letter of introduction to Professor Martyn, who occupied the chair at Cambridge — not to suggest that Professor Martyn might give lectures, but to inquire whether a teacher could possibly be found in the other university or its town. Banks's visit was triumphant: he found Israel Lyons, the son of a Jewish silversmith and teacher of Hebrew, and a young man early distinguished both in botany and in astronomy, and brought him back to be supported by the revenues of Revesby. Botany was thereupon prosecuted in Oxford; the unorthodox undergraduate grew in knowledge; and as it was the duty of the great to befriend and patronize the lowly, in due course Banks was able to recommend his tutor as astronomer on the Arctic voyage of 1773, on which Captain Phipps, R.N., another friend, looked unavailingly for a way to the North Pole.

Meanwhile — the Banksian chronology in these early years is not very distinct, but here at least we have another certain date — William Banks died unexpectedly, of ‘the breaking of an Imposthume in his Breast’, and was buried at Revesby on 1 October 1761.

Dawson MS 47, f.51.

Mrs Banks thereupon moved to London, or rather to Chelsea, with Sarah Sophia, to a pleasant house in Paradise Walk near the Apothecaries’ Garden that Sir Hans Sloane had founded not so very many years before. It was an excellent situation for botanical vacations. It had also the advantage of the neighbourhood of one whose Huntingdonshire country seat was not far from Lincolnshire, John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, a man who, though twenty-five years older than Banks, became his fast friend. Sandwich had for years already been deep in politics, his acquaintance with the World was wide and his way of thinking — to blunt the point of many accusations against him — liberal; to a talent for genial foolery he united great intelligence, and, in spite of his rather peculiar deep-jawed face, an extreme personal charm — a charm, indeed, even more winning and certainly more stable than that of Banks. He was to be useful to Banks, and he was, it seems, to form a pretty accurate estimate of some at least of the capacities of his young friend. Sandwich was capable of sharing a botanical expedition and both were passionate fishermen. Possibly it is to their association of this period, possibly to some later year, that we may refer a story that seems to have given the mature Banks a great deal of pleasure (it is again to Brougham that we owe our account): ‘So zealous were both these friends in the prosecution of this sport, that Sir Joseph used to tell of a project they had formed for suddenly draining the Serpentine by letting off the water; and he was wont to lament their scheme being discovered the night before it was to have been executed: their hope was to have thrown much light on the state and habits of the fish’.

Brougham, II, p. 342

The expectation for profitable research by this radical method is so tenuous that it is much more likely their hope was to have thrown confusion on London. The gentlemen, however, escaped trouble — into which Banks's other passion certainly brought him on a well known occasion. He had wandered out on the Hounslow road collecting plants and had crawled into a ditch. This was badly timed, for it was just after a traveller had been robbed by a footpad. The footpad decamped; search revealed Banks in his ditch — why did men hide in ditches ? — and in spite of indignant denials and struggles he was hauled off to a magistrate. A turning out of pockets must have surprised investigating Justice: the young man was eccentric and not criminal; no doubt there were appropriate apologies. One should not arrest landed gentlemen; but at least this one got a second valued reminiscence for his old age.

This story appears in the General Evening Post, 7 January 1772, in a rather different form, wherein the incident is said to have happened ‘Iately’—Banks having become a subject for gossip.

Banks entered into his inheritance in February 1764. To the expansion of mind consequent on that event we may perhaps attribute his summary way of reorganizing university teaching, for it was in July of that year that Lyons gave his Oxford course of lectures.