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a. Samuel Törner's annotations on the interleaved pages in Banks's copy of Reichard's edition of Systema Plantarum (1779-80), on which Törner has added the reference to Rhopala montana and the specimen Julius von Röhr sent from Cayenne in 1784. q Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. (Online version in colour.)
Source publication
The library and herbarium of Joseph Banks was one of the most prominent natural history collections of late eighteenth-century Britain. The examination of the working practices used in Banks's library, which was based at 32 Soho Square from 1777, reveals the activities of the numerous individuals who worked for Banks and on his collections from the...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... Rohr' on the specimen of Rhopala montana ( figure 2b). 72 Following the acquisition of the specimen, Törner added the name of the new genus as a subject heading, the binomial name, its original geographical locality, along with the two synonyms and references to the publications in which it had previously been described to the interleaved page in Reichard's Systema Plantarum (see figure 2a). 73 This shows a clear division of labour in Banks's library during the 1790s. ...
Context 2
... The references to Roupala montana and von Röhr's discovery of it in Cayenne that were added to Systema Plantarum relate to the more flexible paper technologies used to catalogue Figure 2b. The specimen of Rhopala montana (now Roupala montana Aubl.) sent to Banks from Cayenne by Julius von Röhr in 1784, which Törner referred to in the annotated copy of Systema Plantarum (see figure 2a). The annotation (top right) appears on the verso of the original specimen. ...
Context 3
... typical example can be found in the species Banksia spinulosa Sm., the description and copperplate image of which were first published by Smith in A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland in 1793 (figure 2d). 83 Törner has added references to both the copperplate image and description in Smith's work to the interleaved page in Systema Plantarum (see figure 2a), above which he added the title 'Banksia', indicating that he was inserting a new genus and species to the systematic arrangement. 84 However, these images were not intended to represent a living version of a specific specimen from Smith's herbarium. ...
Context 4
... Smith received his specimen from John White (1756 - Figure 2d. The copperplate image that depicts Banksia spinulosa Sm., from James Edward Smith's A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland (1793), which Törner cited in his annotation in Reichard's Systema Plantarum (see figure 2a). ...
Context 5
... Rohr' on the specimen of Rhopala montana ( figure 2b). 72 Following the acquisition of the specimen, Törner added the name of the new genus as a subject heading, the binomial name, its original geographical locality, along with the two synonyms and references to the publications in which it had previously been described to the interleaved page in Reichard's Systema Plantarum (see figure 2a). 73 This shows a clear division of labour in Banks's library during the 1790s. ...
Context 6
... The references to Roupala montana and von Röhr's discovery of it in Cayenne that were added to Systema Plantarum relate to the more flexible paper technologies used to catalogue Figure 2b. The specimen of Rhopala montana (now Roupala montana Aubl.) sent to Banks from Cayenne by Julius von Röhr in 1784, which Törner referred to in the annotated copy of Systema Plantarum (see figure 2a). The annotation (top right) appears on the verso of the original specimen. ...
Context 7
... typical example can be found in the species Banksia spinulosa Sm., the description and copperplate image of which were first published by Smith in A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland in 1793 (figure 2d). 83 Törner has added references to both the copperplate image and description in Smith's work to the interleaved page in Systema Plantarum (see figure 2a), above which he added the title 'Banksia', indicating that he was inserting a new genus and species to the systematic arrangement. 84 However, these images were not intended to represent a living version of a specific specimen from Smith's herbarium. ...
Citations
... this note does not correspond to the receiver's handwriting but may have been written by Daniel Solander. at the time Solander was Banks' librarian, assisting him in cataloguing and classifying his herbarium collection (Rose 2019). ...
Musschia aurea (Linnaeus f.) Dumortier, Madeira giant
bellflower, is a plant species endemic to the Madeira
Archipelago, first discovered and described in the late
18th century. As part of a broader investigation on the
evolution of the knowledge of Madeira’s plants up to
the 19th century, research was conducted to locate
references and illustrations of Musschia aurea produced
or published during the 18th and 19th centuries. We
were able to retrieve 15 illustrations depicting the whole
plant or details of it, comprising 3 original paintings
and 12 printed illustrations, as well as several references
in books about botany and gardening and catalogues of
several of Europe’s leading botanic gardens. The presence
of Musschia aurea in historical records touches critical
moments in the history of botany and taxonomy; in the
history of botanical illustration, having been depicted
by famous illustrators, such as Pierre-Joseph Redouté,
Sydenham Edwards and James de Carle Sowerby; and in
the history of gardening and horticulture. Although the
plant rapidly spread through the gardens of the European
aristocracy and ruling families at the turn of the 18th
century, its presence in nurseries was scarce, and there
is no evidence that the Madeira giant bellflower became
popular as an ornamental plant. Nevertheless, it is still
present in the collections of most botanic gardens in
Europe.
In this compelling study, Anna Johnston shows how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about convicts, natural history and humanitarian concerns about Indigenous peoples. These were fascinating topics for British readers, and influenced government policies in fields such as prison reform, the history of science, and humanitarian and religious campaigns. Using a rich variety of sources including natural history and botanical illustrations, voyage accounts, language studies, Victorian literature and convict memoirs, this multi-disciplinary account charts how new ways of identifying, classifying, analysing and controlling ideas, populations, and environments were forged and circulated between colonies and through metropolitan centres. They were also underpinned by cultural exchanges between European and Indigenous interlocutors and knowledge systems. Johnston shows how colonial ideas were disseminated through a global network of correspondence and print culture.
William Jack's Appendix. Descriptions of Malayan plants, by William Jack. No. 3 was a paper printed in Bencoolen, Sumatra, that included the original descriptions of Nepenthes ampullaria, N. rafflesiana, Rafflesia titan and Stagmaria verniciflua. The Appendix was not included in the Bencoolen journal Malayan Miscellanies, but it was circulated to eminent botanists, partly with the intention of establishing priority for Jack's new names. We argue that the Appendix was effectively published with distribution dating from May 1821. This takes the date of publication of the two Nepenthes species back by 15 years and makes them the earliest names to be validated for Malesian species in the genus. The Linnaean binomial Gluta renghas is among three names typified here.
This paper explores the editorial influence of Joseph Banks on the Philosophical Transactions—still, at the time of his accession to the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1778, the most prestigious scientific periodical published in English. In particular, it examines how Banks forged, and wielded, personal influence over what went into the Transactions. Nominally, at least, the periodical was under the collective control of the Society's council, with significant statutory safeguards in place to prevent editorship by a presidential clique. Yet this was exactly what Banks was able to speedily create and maintain. In this essay I explore how Banks accomplished this and the pressures it produced, addressing two key questions. First, I examine the social dimension of Banks's management of the Transactions (and what contemporaries thought of it), including particularly the questions of how and to whom access to the periodical was afforded or denied by Banks and his associates; and second, I consider how Banks and the Society dealt with the emerging competitive pressure of new commercial and learned society periodicals. I outline a sphere of scientific sociability partly created by informal processes of communicating, circulating, and evaluating papers developed by Banks and his close associates, and its significance for the Transactions in its engagements with other sites, genres, and conventions of scientific publication.
Mainly known for its links to the periodical market and radical politics, this article recontextualizes the editorship of William Nicholson (1753–1815) in terms of its roots in the metropolitan natural philosophical circles of the second half of the 18th century as well as its impact on experimenters and men of science after 1797. The article argues that Nicholson's editorship of the Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts was a means to expand his philosophical significance among natural philosophers at home and abroad—and was, in fact, a form of epistemological subversion that challenged the “Banksian Learned Empire.”
The construction and distribution of books containing large copperplate images was of great importance to practitioners of natural history during the eighteenth century. This article examines the case of the botanist and president of the Royal Society Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), who attempted to publish a series of images based on the botanical illustrations produced by Georg Forster (1754-94) on Cook's second voyage of exploration (1772-5) during the 1790s. The analysis reveals how the French Revolution influenced approaches to constructing and distributing works of natural history in Britain, moving beyond commercial studies of book production to show how Banks's political agenda shaped the taxonomic content and distribution of this publication. Matters were complicated by Forster's association with radical politics and the revolutionary ideologies attached to materials collected in the Pacific by the 1790s. Banks's response to the Revolution influenced the distribution of this great work, showing how British loyalist agendas interacted with scientific practice and shaped the diffusion of natural knowledge in the revolutionary age.
