a visit in company
with Dr. Solander to Iceland, where he obtained a large number of
botanical specimens, and also purchased a collection of Icelandic
manuscripts and printed books, including the library of Halfdan
Einarsson, the literary historian of the island, which he gave to the
British Museum on his return to England. Ten years later he presented a
second collection to that institution. In 1778 Banks succeeded Sir John
Pringle as President of the Royal Society, a post he held for upwards of
forty-one years. He had been a Fellow since the year 1766. In 1779 he
married Dorothea, daughter of William Weston-Hugesson of Provender, in
the parish of Norton, Kent, and in 1781 he was created a baronet. In
1795 he received the Order of the Bath, and in 1797 he was sworn of the
Privy Council. The National Institute of France elected him a member in
1802. He died at his house at Spring Grove, Isleworth, on the 19th of
June 1820, leaving a widow but no issue.

Sir Joseph Banks, even when a schoolboy, took great interest in all
branches of natural history, and during his residence at Oxford he
procured the appointment of a lecturer on natural science in the
University. He was always exceedingly generous in his relations with men
of science, and the splendid collections in his house in Soho Square
were always open to them for study and investigation.

Sir Joseph Banks bequeathed his library, with the exception of some
manuscripts which he left to the Royal Society and the Mint, his
herbarium, drawings, engravings, and other collections to the Trustees
of the British Museum, subject to a life interest and a life use in them
by his friend and librarian, Mr. Robert Brown, the eminent botanist.
This bequest was accompanied by a proviso that Mr. Brown should be at
liberty to transfer the collections to the British Museum during his
lifetime, if the Trustees were desirous to receive them, and he were
willing to comply with their wishes. An arrangement to this effect was
eventually carried out, and in the year 1827 the transfer was effected;
Mr. Brown at the same time receiving the appointment of Keeper of the
Department of Botany in the Museum, a post he held until his death in
1858.

The number of printed books acquired by the Museum amounted to about
sixteen thousand, consisting principally of works on natural history and
the journals and transactions of learned societies. The manuscripts
numbered but forty-nine, but among them