The contribution of Thomas Pennant (1726–1798), Welsh naturalist, to the Australian ornithology of Cook's first voyage (1768–1771)

Abstract

Thomas Pennant – Welsh traveller, antiquary, naturalist, and author – visited Joseph Banks in September 1771 shortly after Banks returned from his voyage around the world (1768–1771) with James Cook. It was almost certainly on the occasion of this visit that Pennant was given access to manuscript descriptions of various birds and other animals that had been met with on the voyage, saw the specimens Banks had brought back to England, and was given some of them. Among the Pennant papers in the National Library of Wales is a collection of descriptions in Pennant's handwriting that relate to birds met with by Banks on Cook's voyage. These descriptions may be only part of what was once a more extensive collection in that regard. Of especial interest and importance among them are those of 13 Australian landbird species. Some years later, Pennant must have noticed that John Latham, in his monumental A general synopsis of birds (1781–1785), had not described some species that Pennant possessed specimens or descriptions of, or that Latham's information about some of those he described was deficient in certain respects. Pennant communicated descriptions and notes on those birds to Latham, most notably in relation to several landbirds that had been collected in eastern Australia by Banks in the course of his voyage with Cook. It is apparent from the sources discussed in this paper that Banks took more specimens of Australian birds back to England from the first Cook voyage than has previously been realised. It is a strange quirk of history that, today, more evidence in that regard is available from Pennant, who did not go on the voyage, than from Banks who did.