That same year Banks received a dreadful blow when Daniel Solander, his friend
and collaborator, upon whom he relied to complete the Florilegium, died of a stroke.
Although Banks was his employer and patron, a letter written after Solander’s death
describes their close personal relationship:
Through his death I have suffered a loss which will be impossible for me to fill even if
I should find another person as learned and as noble ... it is not possible for my heart to
replace the impression which twenty years ago it took as easily as wax and which now will
not be effaced until the heart itself dies.Trial proofs of the Florilegium had been bound with the original drawings and
sketches, an immense amount of money and effort had been expended on the plates
alone, yet it is a mystery why it was not published. The voyage could be considered
as Banks’ greatest achievement, so why could he not bring himself to publish?
Publication would have confirmed Banks’
and Solander’s scientific reputations.
Solander’s important contribution to
science would have been remembered since
as Banks wrote, ‘everything was written
through our combined labour’.
Sir Joseph Banks died almost forty years
later in 1820 without his great work having
been published. He bequeathed to his
librarian Robert Brown a lifetime interest
in his house and his library. His botanical
collections went to the Linnean Society
which eventually passed them on to the
British Museum and the collection then
moved to the new Natural History Museum
after it opened in 1881.
The plates remained in storage and
gathering dust for the next 200 years until
Alecto Historical Editions and the British
Museum decided to print the complete
set of images. In the 1980s a superb
limited edition of 100 copies of the Banks’
Florilegium, was published in thirty-four Plate of Banksia serrata prepared for the Florilegium,
1783, National Museum of Australia
(^52) Where Australia Collides with Asia
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