Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/597

 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 473 being to the British Museum. Brown made over these collections 1743-1820. to the nation within a short time after acquiring possession of them. Vrancis Bauer was also provided for during his life, to enable him to continue his exquisite drawings from new plants at Kew. The character which Banks has left behind him is that of a munificent patron of science rather than an actual worker himself. His own writings arc comparatively trifling. He wrote A Short scientific Account of the Causes of the Disease called the Blight, Mildew, g"^,^' and Rust, which was published in 1805, reaching a second edition in 1806, and re-edited in 1807, besides being reprinted by W. Curtis in his Observations on the British Grasses, and in the Pamphleteer for 1813. He was the author of an anonymous tract on the Pro- priety of Allowing a Qualified Exportation of Wool in 1782, and m 1809 he brought out a small work on the merino sheep, a pet subject of his as well as of the King, George III. There were some short articles by him in the Transactions of the Horticul- tural Society, a few in the Archeeologia, one in the Linnean Society's Transactions, and a short essay on the Economy of a Park, in vol. 39 of Young's Annals of Agriculture. He published Kaempfer's Icones Plantarum in 1791, in folio, and directed the issue of Roxburgh's Coromandel Plants, 1795-1819, 3 vols., folio. He seems to have given up all thought of publishing the results of his collections on the death of Dr. Solander, in 1782, by apoplexy, although the plates were engraved and the text drawn Manu- up in proper order for press. The manuscripts are preserved in the ^-^p^- botanical department of the British Museum, in Cromwell Road. His collections were freely accessible to all scientific men of every nation, and his house in Soho Square became the gathering- place of scienca The library was catalogued by Dr. Dryander, OoUectiona and issued in five volumes in 1800-5, a work greatly valued on *"^ ^**''*'^' account of its accuracy. Fabricius described his insects ; Brous- sonet received his specimens of fishes ; Gaertner, Vahl, and Robert Brown have largely used the stores of plants, and four editions of Desiderata were issued previously to the publication of the Catalogue. Banks spared neither pains nor cost in enriching his library, which, at his death, must be considered as being the richest of its class. It is still kept by itself in a room at the British Museum, although the natural history collections have been trans- ferred to the new building at South Kensington. An unstinted eulogy was pronounced by Cuvier before the Academie Boyale des Scieticea in the April following the death of Banks. In this he testifies to the generous intervention of Banks French on behalf of foreign naturalists. When the collections made by n»turaii8t8. La billardiere during D'Entrecasteaux's expedition fell by fortune of war into British hands and were brought to England, Banks hastened to send them back to France without having even glanced at them, w^riting to M. de Jussieu that he would not steal a single Digitized by Google