The Government entrusted to the Royal Society the sum of £4000, to spend on equipping this vessel and paying her officers and crew. Cook apparently received a clear salary of £120 a year, in addition to a special gratuity of £105 for his astronomical work, and a sustenance allowance for himself and his assistant astronomer, Mr. Green, of £120. He was also paid by the Admiralty a small "command" allowance of five shillings a day. Next in importance to Captain Cook in the history of this remarkable voyage will rank (Sir) JOSEPH BANKS, described by the Royal Society as a gentleman of large fortune, and said in other correspondence of the period to have an estate bringing in £6000 a year. He was born in London in 1743, the son of a wealthy physician who had become a Member of Parliament for Peterborough. Educated at Oxford, he early conceived an intense interest in botany and zoology; and having in 1764 inherited all his father's property, he soon afterwards made at his own expense a scientific expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador, where he made a famous collection of insects and plants. A neighbouring landowner, Lord Sandwich, had become head of the Admiralty, and Banks obtained through him leave to join Cook's expedition. He then laid out about £10,000 on all the stores and other preparations necessary for the conduct of an elaborate enquiry into the natural history of the lands and seas through which the expedition was to pass, and he engaged a Swedish naturalist, a pupil of Linnæus--Dr. Daniel Solander--to accompany him, besides four draughtsmen to make pictures, and nine servants to do all the rough work of natural-history collecting, &c.