This was an amazing disclosure. Joseph Banks was England's greatest botanist, and the Endeavour voyage — that is the one on which Captain Cook charted the 1769 transit of Venus and claimed Australia for the crown, among rather a lot else — was the greatest botanical expedition in history. Banks paid 10,000 pounds, about $1 million in today's money, to bring himself and a party of nine others — a naturalist, a secretary, three artists, and four servants — on the three-year adventure around the world. Goodness knows what the bluff Captain Cook made of such a velvety and pampered assemblage, but he seems to have liked Banks well enough and could not but admire his talents in botany — a feeling shared by posterity.
这句话里包含着丰富的历史内容。约瑟夫·班克斯是英国最伟大的植物学家，“奋进”号航行——即库克船长绘制1769年金星凌日图、宣布澳大利亚为皇家殖民地的那次航行——是历史上最伟大的植物探险。班克斯支付了l万英镑，相当于今天的60万英镑，让自己和另外9个人——1名博物学家、l名秘书、3名美术家和4名仆人——加入了这次为期3年的环球探险活动。天知道性格粗率的库克船长是怎么和这帮子文绉绉的、娇生惯养的人相处的，但他似乎很喜欢班克斯，禁不住钦佩他在植物学方面的才能——后辈们也怀有同样的感情。

Never before or since has a botanical party enjoyed greater triumphs. Partly it was because the voyage took in so many new or little-known places — Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea — but mostly it was because Banks was such an astute and inventive collector. Even when unable to go ashore at Rio de Janeiro because of a quarantine, he sifted through a bale of fodder sent for the ship's livestock and made new discoveries. Nothing, it seems, escaped his notice. Altogether he brought back thirty thousand plant specimens, including fourteen hundred not seen before — enough to increase by about a quarter the number of known plants in the world.
没有哪个植物考察小组取得过那么大的成就。过去没有，此后也没有。这在一定程度上是因为这次航行将许多不大知名的新地方——火地岛、塔希提岛、新西兰、澳大利亚、新几内亚——占为殖民地，但主要是因为班克斯是个敏锐和天才的采集家。即使由于检疫规定而未能在里约热内卢上岸，他还是为船上的牲口偷偷弄来一包饲料，做出了新的发现。似乎什么也逃不过他的目光。他总共带回来3万件植物标本，包括1400件以前没有见过的——能为世界上已知的植物总数增加大约四分之一。