Sm JOSEPH BANKS. and naturalists. 1787-1810 There were one or two sections of society, no doubt, which Geoymphere may be supposed to have taken some active interest in the movement. Cook's First Voyage of Discovery, written by Hawkes worth and published in 1773, had made a deep im- pression on the scientific mind at the time, and the feeling was revived when it became known that the Government had determined to occupy the territory which the celebrated seaman had explored on the east coast of New Holland. The only living man of note who had any personal knowledge of the country was Sir Joseph Banks, to whom the nation was indebted for all that it cared to hear about New South Wales. It was from his accurate and circumstantial journal of the voyage,^'* we may believe, that Hawkesworth wrote his pretty descriptions of the meadows and lawns of Botany Bay, the beautiful wild flowers, the birds of exquisite plumage, the delightful climate, the kangaroo and the turtle, the Indians fishing in their canoes, and the various incidents which the explorers met with on their excursions inland. Sir Joseph was President of the Royal Society, the most enthusiastic patron of science known in English history, in great favour with George the Third, and a man of unbounded influence with the Government throughout the active portion of his life. He it was, wrote Lord Brougham, speaking from his The founder personal knowledge of the man, who may be truly said to colony. have planted and founded the colony of Botany Bay.^f If
- Hawkesworth, introduction, vol. ii, p. xiii.
t Lives of Philosophers of the Time of Kinsr Geoi^ the Third. Mr. G^rge Suttor, in a short memoir of Sir Joseph BanKs written from personal know- ledge and published at Parramatta in 1855, said: — *'The establishment of our colony at Botany Bay originated entirely with Sir Joseph Banks." The meadows at Botany Bay. Digitized by Google
