In 1772 Matthew Duane (lawyer and antiquary, 1707-1785) joined in a gift of sculptures with Thomas Tyrwhitt (1720-1786), a scholar, who also bequeathed his library of classical authors to the British Museum. The sculptures in question[9] were purchased by the donors at an auction in London,[10] in order that they might be put in a place of safety. The year 1772 is also noteworthy as the date of the first Parliamentary grant for the augmentation of the Museum collection. The House of Commons in that year voted a sum of £8410 for the purchase of the valuable museum of antiquities which had been formed by Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), British Ambassador at Naples, 1764-1800. The vases formed the most important section, but the collection also contained several sculptures in the round and in relief.[11] On the other hand a square altar with reliefs[12] was presented by Sir W. Hamilton in 1776, and perhaps also a head of Heracles.[13] A colossal foot of Apollo[14] was given in 1784. In 1780 an interesting relief, No. 750, was presented by Sir Joseph Banks, and Col. the Hon. A. C. Fraser, of Lovat (1736-1815). Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), traveller, botanist, and President of the Royal Society, was a great benefactor to the Library and Botanical collections, but his gifts of sculpture were limited to this relief, and to a relief representing Jupiter and Ceres, presented in 1809. Charles Townley gave two marble fountains[15] in 1786, but his main collections were not added to the Museum till after his death. A valuable gift was received from the Society of Dilettanti, about 1795, consisting of the sculptures and inscriptions collected by the expedition to Ionia which had been sent out by that Society in 1764, under the direction of Dr. Richard Chandler. The collection included several Attic reliefs,[16] and some important inscriptions, among them the well-known report on the progress of the Erechtheion.[17] In 1870 the same Society presented the fruits of its excavations at Prienè, conducted by Mr. R. P. Pullan. Two Roman portrait statues, of inferior merit, which had passed into the hands of the British at the Capitulation of Alexandria, in 1800, were placed in the Department of Antiquities, in 1802. The collection of sculpture which had thus slowly come into existence during the first fifty years of the Museum's history, received its most brilliant accessions during the first quarter of the present century.