ABSTRACT

In the rst place the spelling and capitalization of Banks and his correspondents has been almost entirely preserved, though occasional missing letters have been added in italics and words in brackets. The transcriptions are as near to the original as possible. Serious misspellings are explained in footnotes. The conventions regarding deletions and insertions established by Harold B. Carter, and also used by Neil Chambers, have been employed in transcribing the manuscripts. Carter showed deletions in italics between obliques thus: /Deleted text/. He showed insertions in plain text in obliques thus: /Inserted text/. Carter also felt that it was important to denote whether a correspondent was an FRS to show Banks’s wide network of scientists. This convention is adhered to here. Otherwise, normal Hakluyt Society style has been followed which, for example, does not aim for a facsimile appearance. All underlinings are those of the original documents. Complete words which have been added for the sake of clarity have been put in square brackets, while abbreviations have been expanded by the use of italics. Square brackets have also been used for editorial insertions. Banks generally endorsed upon letters the dates of receipt and when he replied to them. The date of receipt might be jotted down at the foot of the rst page or on the backs of letters. Those have been added as footnotes. For the convenience of the reader, it has sometimes been necessary to insert capital

letters in Banks’s documents and full stops to mark the end of sentences. This has been done in his journals and when done in individual documents it is generally noted in a footnote. Banks used commas and they will be found where he chose to put them – no attempt has been made to make any changes in his use of commas. Superscripts were common during Banks’s day and are reproduced here. Icelandic place-names and the proper names of Icelanders are usually garbled and have

been put into modern Icelandic in footnotes as they occur. Banks’s correspondents have been identied and short biographies are to be found in the list of correspondents in Appendix 13. Marginal notes in Banks’s documents are either included as insertions or in footnotes.