as a result, two were sent, the one under Captain John Ross in search of the North-West Passage; the other, which included Franklin, to sail northwards by the east coast of Greenland.

He was on several occasions invited to stand for Parliament, but always declined, preferring to devote his entire time to his duties as President of the Royal Society, and to the innumerable functions it entailed.

It is sometimes said that Banks viewed with strong disapproval the formation of other societies for the pursuit of natural science. This was certainly so in the case of the Astronomical Society, which he considered would seriously decrease the importance of that over which he himself presided. But this was only because he conceived the objects of the former association to be so intimately connected with those of the Royal Society that there would not be sufficient scope for both. On the other hand, he was one of the founders of the Linnean Society in 1788, and took an even more prominent part in the formation of the Royal Institution in 1799.

In March 1779 he married Dorothea, daughter of William Western Hugessen, Esq., of Provender, Kent. In 1782 Solander died, and from that time onward Banks became more and more absorbed in the duties of the Royal Society, and acted as chief counsellor in all scientific matters to the king. In this capacity he had virtual control of the Royal Gardens at Kew, then under the cultural care of the elder Aiton, where were raised the plants produced by seeds brought home by himself, and so many of the novelties described in l'Héritier's Sertum Anglicum, Aiton's Hortus Kewensis, and other botanical works. It was due to his indefatigable exertions and representations that the Royal Gardens at Kew were raised to the position of the first in the world, and that collectors were sent to the West Indies, the Cape Colonies, and Australia, to send home living plants and seeds, and herbaria, for the Royal Gardens. He kept Francis Bauer (who, and his brother Ferdinand, were the most accomplished botanical artists of the century) at Kew con

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stantly occupied in making drawings of Australian and other plants, keeping him in liberal pay, and leaving him a legacy in his will.

He was the first to bring indiarubber into notice, and early advocated the cultivation of tea in India. He established botanic gardens in Jamaica, St. Vincent, and Ceylon, besides giving invaluable support to Colonel Kyd in the foundation of the garden at Sibpur, near Calcutta.

He was a keen agriculturist, and amongst his very few published writings one is on Blight Mildew and Rust, another on the introduction of the Potato, and a third on the Apple Aphis. The Horticultural Society was founded in 1804, and Banks is named as one of the persons to whom the Charter was granted in 1809. The esteem in which he was held by this Society is shown by their electing him an honorary member, and by their instituting, after his death, a Banksian medal.

Services of an international character were rendered by him when, in the course of war, the collections of foreign. naturalists had been captured by British vessels; on no less than eleven occasions were they restored to their former owners through the direct intervention of Banks with the Lords of the Admiralty and Treasury. The disinterestedness of such a course will be at once understood when it is remembered that these collections, some of them of inestimable value (now at the Jardin des Plantes at Paris), would otherwise have contributed to the aggrandisement of his own magnificent museum. "He even sent as far as the Cape of Good Hope to procure some chests belonging to Humboldt; and it is well known that his active exertions liberated many scientific men from foreign prisons. He used great exertions to mitigate the captivity of the unfortunate Flinders, and it was principally by his intercession that our Government issued orders in favour of La Perouse " (Weld's History of the Royal Society).

Great as his services to science are known to have been, these will never be fully realised till his correspondence in the British Museum and elsewhere shall have been thor

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oughly searched.

That they were not confined to natural history is evident. He was an assiduous promoter of the Association for the Exploration of Tropical Africa, and it was under his auspices that Mungo Park, Clapperton, and others were sent out. He was one of a committee to investigate the subject of lightning conductors. His letters to Josiah Wedgwood show his keen appreciation not only of the work of the great potter, but of his other ingenious contrivances; among the mass of papers left by him on his death was an illustrated dissertation on the history and art of the manufacture of porcelain by the Chinese. He took a deep interest in the coinage, and was in close communication with Matthew Boulton on questions of minting. On applying for information on this latter point to Dr. Roberts-Austen, that gentleman informed the editor that, though not officially an officer of the Mint, Banks had probably served on some departmental or Parliamentary commissions charged with mint questions; and further, that he had presented the mint with a really fine library, embracing all the books it possessed relating to numismatics and coinage questions generally, together with a valuable collection of coins. In reference to this, the editor has also found, on looking over some Banksian MS. in the British Museum, that these included a draft code of regulations for the conduct of the officers of the Mint.

His interest in manufactures was also constant; could his letters be brought together, a flood of light would thereby be thrown upon the progress of arts and sciences in Europe during his long tenure of the presidency of the Royal Society.

As an instance of his zeal for science may be mentioned the interest he took in Sir Charles Blagden's experiments to determine the power of human beings to exist in rooms heated to an excessive temperature. Sir Joseph Banks was one of the first who plunged into a chamber heated to the temperature of 260° Fahr., and was taken out nearly exhausted. It may be mentioned that Sir Francis Chantrey once remained two minutes in a furnace at a temperature of 320°.

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For a man of his distinction the dignities which were conferred upon him by royal favour seem disproportionate. He was created a Baronet in 1781, a Knight of the Bath in 1795, and two years subsequently was sworn of the Privy Council. In 1802 he was chosen one of the eight foreign members of the French Académie des Sciences, in Paris.

To the last his house, library, and museum were open to all scientific men, of whatever nationality, and the services of his successive librarians, Solander, Dryander, and Brown, cannot be over-estimated. His Thursday breakfasts and Sunday soirées in Soho Square made his house the centre of influential gatherings of an informal kind; curiosities of every description were brought by visitors and exhibited, and each new subject, book, drawing, animal, plant, or mineral, each invention of art or science, was sure to find its way to Sir Joseph's house. It was at one of these parties that he strongly recommended the acquisition of the Linnean Library and collections to James Edward Smith, a young Norwich physician, and an ardent botanist. This was the turning-point of Smith's life, and led to the foundation of the Linnean Society, which held its meetings for many years, during the lifetime of Robert Brown, in Banks's house in Soho Square, where the Linnean collections were placed previous to the Society's removal to apartments provided by Government in Burlington House.

Sir Joseph Banks became latterly a great martyr to the gout, "which grew to such an intensity as to deprive him entirely of the power of walking, and for fourteen or fifteen years previous to his death, he lost the use of his lower limbs so completely as to oblige him to be carried, or wheeled, as the case might require, by his servants in a chair in this way he was conveyed to the more dignified chair of the Royal Society, and also to the [Royal Society] Club-the former of which he very rarely omitted to attend, and not often the latter; he sat apparently so much at his ease, both at the Society and in the Club, and conducted the business of the meetings with so much spirit and dignity,

that a stranger would not have supposed that he was often suffering at the time, nor even have observed an infirmity, which never disturbed his uniform cheerfulness.

'As the gout increased his difficulty of locomotion, Sir Joseph found it convenient to have some spot to retire to in the neighbourhood of London, and fixed upon a small villa near Hounslow Heath, called Spring Grove, consisting of some woods and a good garden laid out with ornamental shrubs and flower-beds, and neatly kept under the inspection of Lady and Miss Banks" (his sister) [Barrow, loc. cit. pp. 40-42]. Since his death the building has been pulled down and replaced by a mansion now in the possession of A. Pears, Esq.

The last occasion on which Banks took the chair at the

Royal Society was on 16th March 1820. In May, declining health led him to announce his resignation of the Presidency, which he had held for over forty-one years; but the universal desire which was expressed, both by the Council of the Society and by the king himself, that he would retain the office, induced him to withdraw his resignation. He died, however, very shortly afterwards at Spring Grove, on the 19th June 1820, leaving a widow but no lineal issue.

He was buried at Heston, Middlesex, in which parish Spring Grove is situated. The church has since been rebuilt, and now covers the spot where he was buried. A tablet with a simple inscription marks as nearly as possible the place where his body lies. By his will he expressly desires that his body be interred in the most private manner in the church or churchyard of the parish in which he should happen to die, and entreats his dear relatives to spare themselves the affliction of attending the ceremony, and earnestly requests that they will not erect any monument to his memory.

In July of the same year the Council of the Royal Society resolved to erect a full-length marble statue of Sir Joseph Banks, to be executed by Mr. (afterwards Sir Francis) Chantrey. A sum of £2000 was subscribed, of which £525 was paid to the sculptor, the surplus being devoted to an