Chap. V. OF BANKSIAN AND and made some additions to their scientific stores. The BOOK II, Endeavour anchored in the Downs on the 12th of June, THE FOUN 1771, after an absence of nearly three years. Beyond the BROTHE immediate and obvious scientific results of the voyage, it MUSEUM was the means, eventually, of conferring an eminent bene- LIBRARY. faction on our West Indian Colonies. It gave them the Bread-Fruit tree (Artocarpus incisa). The transplantation of God's bounties from clime to clime was a favourite pursuit and a life-long one-with Sir Joseph BANKS, and its agencies cost him much time and thought, as well as no small expenditure of fortune. THE EXPEDI. TION TO ICE July. The hardships and sufferings of Terra-del-Fuego and of Batavia had not yet taken off the edge of his appetite for remote voyages. He expended some thousands of pounds in buying instruments and making preparations for a new LAND. expedition with Cook, but the foolish and obstructive 1772. conduct of our Navy Board inspired him with a temporary disgust. He then turned his attention to Northern Europe. He resolved that after visiting the western isles of Scotland he would explore Iceland. SOLANDER was again his companion, together with two other northern naturalists, Drs. LIND and VON TROIL. BANKS chartered a vessel at his own cost (amounting, for the ship alone, to about six hundred pounds). Before starting for the cold north, they refreshed their eyes with the soft beauties of the Isle of Wight. There, said one of the delighted party, 'Nature has spared none of her favours;' and a good many of us have unconsciously repeated his remark, long afterwards. They reached the Western Isles of Scotland before the end of July, and, after a long visit, explored Staffa, the wonders of which were then almost unknown. Scientific attention, indeed, BOOK II, was first called to them by BANKS, when he communicated to Thomas PENNANT, of Downing, his minute survey, and DER OF THE his drawings of the basaltic columns. THE FOUN BANKSIAN MUSEUM AND LIBRARY. STAFFA. 1772. August 12. He thought that the mind can scarcely conceive of anything more splendid, in its kind, than the now famous cave. THE VISIT TO When he asked the local name of it, his guide gave him an answer which, to Mr. BANKS, seemed to need explanation, though the name has nowadays become but too familiar to our ears. The Cave of FIUHN,' said the islander. Who or what is "Fiuhn"?' rejoined BANKS. The stone, he says, of which the pillars are formed, is a coarse kind of basalt, much resembling the 'Giants' Causeway' in Ireland, ‘though none of them so neat as the specimens of the latter which I have seen at the British Museum. . . . .. Here, it is dirty brown; in the Irish, a fine black.' But he carried away with him the fullest impression of the amazing grandeur of the whole scene. Banks to Pennant; Aug., 1772. THE TOUR IN The tourists reached Iceland on the twenty-eighth of August. They explored the country, and saw everything notable which it contained. On the twenty-first of September they visited the most conspicuous of the geysers, or hot-springs, and spent thirteen hours in examining them. On the twenty-fourth, they explored Mount Hecla. The most famous geyser described by VON TROIL (who acted usually as penman for the party) was situate near a farm called Harkaudal, about two days' journey from Hecla. You see, he tells us, a large expanse of fields shut in, upon one side, by lofty snow-covered mountains, far away, with their heads commonly shrouded in clouds, that occasionally sink (under the force of a prevalent wind) so as to conceal the slopes, while displaying the peaks. The peaks, at such moments, seem to spring out of the clouds themselves. On another hand, Hecla is seen, with its three ice-capped sum BOOK II, THE FOUN Chap. V. DER OF THE BANKSIAN AND mits, and its volcanic vapours; and then, again, a ridge of stupendous rocks, at the foot of which the boiling springs gush forth, with deafening roar, and are backed by a broad marsh containing forty or fifty other springs, or 'geysers,' MUSEUM from which arise immense columns of vapour, subject of LIBRARY. course to all the influences and lightings-up of wind and sky. Our tourists carefully watched the 'spoutings' of the springs-which are always fitful-and, according to their joint observations, some of these rose to the height of sixty feet. Occasionally-it has since been observed by later 7 Sept., 1773. explorers-they reach to an elevation of more than three times that number of feet. Nor did Mr. BANKS neglect the literature of Iceland, which abounds with interest. He bought the Library of Halfdan EINARSSON, the literary historian of Iceland, and made other large and choice collections. And he presented the whole to the British Museum-after bestowing, I believe, some personal study on their contents-upon his return to England at the close of the year. Von Troil to Bergmann; (Abridged.) POSITION AND INFLU ENCE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS. For many generations, it has been very conducive to the SOCIAL possession of social prestige in this country that a man should have acquired the reputation of an adventurous traveller. Even if the traveller shall have seen no anthropophagi, no men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,' he is likely to attain to some degree of social eminence, merely as one who has explored those 'Antres vast and desarts idle,' of which home-keeping people have no knowledge, save from the tales of voyagers. To prestige of this kind, Mr. BANKS added respectable scientific attainments, a large fortune, and a liberal mind. He was also the favoured BOOK II, THE FOUN DER OF THE BANKSIAN MUSEUM LIBRARY. THE ROYAL SOCIETY, TORY UNDER THE RULE OF BANKS. possessor of graceful manners and of no mean powers of conversation. It was, therefore, quite in the ordinary course of things that his house in London should become one of the social centres of the metropolis. It became much more than that. From the days of his youth BANKS had seen much of foreigners; he had mixed with men of European distinction. An extensive correspondence with the Continent became to him both a pursuit and an enjoyment, and one of its results, in course of time, was that at his house in Soho Square every eminent foreigner who came to England was sure to be seen. To another class of persons that house became scarcely less distinguished as the abode, not only of the rich Collections in natural history which their owner had gone so far to seek, and had gathered with so much toil and hardship, but of a noble Library, for the increase of which the book-shops of every great town in Europe had been explored. The possessor of such manifold distinctions and of such AND ITS HIS habits of mind seemed, to most men, marked out as the natural head of a great scientific institution. Such a man would be sure to reflect honour on the Society, as well as to derive honour from his headship. But at this particular epoch the Royal Society (then the one conspicuous scientific association in the kingdom) was much embroiled. Mr. BANKS was, in many respects, just the man to assuage dissensions. But these particular dissensions were of a kind which his special devotion to natural history tended rather to aggravate than to soften. Mathematicians, as all men know, have been illustrious benefactors to the world, but-be the cause what it maythey have never been famous for a large-minded estimate of the pursuits and hobbies of other men, whom Nature had not made mathematical. At the time when Joseph BOOK II, Chap. V. THE FOUN DER OF THE AND Book I, BANKS leaped-as one may say-into eminence, both scientific and social, in London, Sir John PRINGLE WAS President of the Royal Society, and his position there some- BANKSIAN what resembled the position in which we have seen Sir MUSEUM Hans SLOANE to have been placed. Like Sir Hans, LIBRARY. PRINGLE was an eminent physician, and a keen student of See before, physics. He did not give umbrage to his scientific team, exactly in the way in which SLOANE had given it--by an overweening love of reading long medical papers. But natural, not mathematical, philosophy, was his forte; and the mathematicians were somewhat uneasy in the traces whilst Sir John held the reins. If PRINGLE should be succeeded by BANKS, there would be a change indeed on the box, but the style of coachmanship was likely to be little altered. It is not surprising that there should have been a good deal of jibbing, just as the change was at hand, and also for some time after it had been made. TION TO THE 30 Nov. Mr. BANKS was elected to the chair of the Royal Society THE ELECon the 30th of November, 1777. He found it to be a PRESIDENCY. very difficult post. But, in the end, the true geniality of 1777 the man, the integrity of his nature, and the suavity of his manners, won over most, if not quite all, of his opponents. The least that can be said of his rule in that chair is that he made the Royal Society more famous throughout Europe, than it had ever been since the day when it was presided over by NEWTON. For it was not the least eminent quality of BANKS' character that, to him, a touch of science made the whole world kin.' He was a good subject, as well as a good man. He knew the blessings of an aristocratic and time-honoured monarchy. He had that true insight which enables a man to discriminate sharply between the populace and the People. |