Joseph Banks: botanical work on Cook's voyage finally makes it to print

Life-size prints of hundreds of plant specimens collected by the British naturalist come together in Florilegium

The publishing deadline was missed by more than 200 years, but finally the work of one of the great men of the Enlightenment has been printed and distributed, sharing with the world the detailed botanical work of Joseph Banks on his journey aboard James Cook's Endeavour.

Cook's mission when he left England in 1768 was ostensibly to chart the transit of Venus - a measurement that would allow the estimation of the distance from the Earth to the sun, which would aid navigation. However, Cook had been instructed to attempt the "discovery of the southern continent so often mentioned".