Consideration of the reasons why Joseph
Banks did not complete the publication of
the plates during his lifetime.
(Illustration - Banks Florilegium Plate 348)

ED06

THE DELAY

That Banks did not publish in the eighteenth century may be ascribed to a complex
variety of causes but lack of demand on the part of European botanists was not one of
them. Linnaeus had written to John Ellis on 22 October 1771:

. . . By all that is great and good I intreat you, who know so well the value of science,
to do all that in you lies for the publication of these new acquisitions that the learned
world may not be deprived of them . . .

In November 1784 Banks wrote:

. . . All that is left is so little that it can be completed in two months, if only the
engravers can come to put the finishing touches to it . . .

The main reason for the delay in publishing was that Banks understandably did not
consider a modest style of publication appropriate. Had Parkinson and his fellow artist
Buchan not died on the voyage the water-colour drawings would no doubt have been
completed sooner. Had Banks not been an exceptionally busy man with a wide variety
of interests and responsibilities especially as President of the Royal Society, the work
of the engravers might have been speeded up.

By 1784 when the plates were more or less ready, thirteen years had elapsed since
the end of the voyage and circumstances had changed. If the desire for fame had been
part of the original impetus to publish, Banks no longer needed it; and by 1784 Banks
may well have felt that he was no longer depriving the learned world of knowledge
because he had made his discoveries available to botanists willing and able to come
to his house and collection in Soho Square. In 1782 his old friend and colleague
Solander died. This event used to be thought of as having delayed publication
irrevocably, but it is at least equally possible that it was the economic circumstances
of the 1780s leading up to the Napoleonic Wars that caused the indefinite
postponement. In particular there was a sharp drop in Banks' rental income from his
estates in Lincolnshire, a county greatly affected by the depression in the long wool
trade following the American War of Independence.

This failure to publish, having come so very close to doing so, has long been regarded
as one of the tragedies of science and to some extent it still remains one of the
puzzles of history.