Joseph BANKS was born at Reresby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, on the thirteenth of December, 1743. He was the only son of William BANKS-HODGKENSON, of Reresby ABBEY, by his wife Sophia BATE. [Sidenote: THE BANKESES OF RERESBY ABBEY.] Mr. BANKS-HODGKENSON was the descendant of a Yorkshire family, which was wont, of old, to write itself ‘Banke,’ and was long settled at Banke-Newton, in the wapentake of Staincliffe. The second son of a certain Henry BANKE, of Banke-Newton, acquired, by marriage, Beck Hall, in Giggleswick; and by his great-grandson, the first Joseph BANKES, Reresby Abbey was purchased towards the close of the seventeenth century. His son (also Joseph) sat in Parliament for Peterborough, and served as Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1736. The second (and eldest surviving) son of the Member for Peterborough took the name of HODGKENSON, as heir to his mother’s ancestral estate of Overton, in Derbyshire, but on the death of his elder brother (and his consequent heirship) resumed the paternal name, and resigned the Overton estate to his next brother, who became Robert HODGKENSON, of Overton. Mr. BANKS-HODGKENSON died in 1761, leaving to his son, afterwards Sir Joseph BANKS, a plentiful estate. The youngster was then little more than beginning his career at Oxford, whither he had recently come from Eton, though his schooling had been begun at Harrow. [Sidenote: EARLY YEARS OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS.] He was ‘lord of himself,’ and of a fine fortune, at the critical age of eighteen. To many, such an inheritance, under like circumstances, has brought misery. To Joseph BANKS, it brought noble means for the prosecution of a noble aim. It was the ambition of this young Etonian—not to eclipse jockies, or to dazzle the eyes of fools, but—to tread in the footsteps of LINNÆUS. Rich, hardy, and handsome in person, sanguine in temperament, and full of talent, he resolved that, for some years to come, after leaving the University, the life that might so easily be brimmed with enjoyments should incur many privations and face many hardships, in order to win both knowledge and the power of benefiting the Public by its communication. That object of early ambition, it will be seen, was abundantly realised in the after-years.