work, and at his suggestion the materials were transferred with the same object to my maternal grandfather, Dawson Turner, F.R.S.,[1] an eminent botanist and antiquarian, who had been a friend of Banks. Mr. Turner at once had the whole faithfully transcribed, but for which precaution the Journal would as a whole have been irretrievably lost, as the sequel will show. Beyond having copies of the manuscript made, Mr. Turner seems to have done nothing towards the Life, and after a lapse of some years the originals were returned, together with the copies, to Mr. Knatchbull Hugessen, who placed them in the hands of the late Mr. Bell, Secretary of the Royal Society, in the hopes that he would undertake to write the Life. For their subsequent wanderings and the ultimate fate of many portions, I am indebted to Mr. Carruthers, F.R.S., late Keeper of the Botanical Collections at the British Museum, who has favoured me with the following interesting letter concerning them:—
British Museum (Natural History),
Cromwell Road, South Kensington, S.W.,
14th July 1893.
Dear Sir Joseph—Since I saw you about the Journal of Sir Joseph Banks in Captain Cook's Voyage, I have been making further inquiries regarding the original document.
The Banksian Journal and correspondence were sent to the Botanical Department, after correspondence with Mr. Knatchbull Hugessen, to remain in my keeping till the death of Lady Knatchbull, when it would become the property of the trustees. I was instructed to deposit it in the Manuscript Department. This was in October 1873. Some time thereafter I persuaded Mr. Daydon Jackson to look at the correspondence with the view of preparing a biography of Banks. This he agreed to do. I wrote to Mr. Bell, who informed me in a letter written 14th February 1876, that he had tried to get Lord
- ↑ It was when on a visit to my grandfather in 1833 that I first saw the original Journal in Banks's handwriting. It was then being copied, and I was employed to verify the copies of the earlier part by comparison with the original. I well remember being as a boy fascinated with the Journal, and I never ceased to hope that it might one day be published.
