the Manuscripts of the late Peter Collinson. 273 
cured by a large correspondence. : He has raised: the reputation 
of the Chelsea garden so much, that.it excels all the gardens in 
‘Europe for its amazing variety of plants of all orders and classes, 
and from all climates, as I beheld with much delight this 19th 
of July, 1764. j 
October 3d, 1759, after nine years absence from Good wood 
after the death of my intimate friend the late Duke of Rich- 
mond, I accompanied the present Duchess there, and to my 
agreeable surprise found the hardy exotic trees much grown. 
There were two fine great magnolias about twenty feet high in the 
American grove that flowered annually. (My tree flowered this | 
year, 1760, that I raised from seed about twenty years before.) 
Some of the larches measured near the ground seventeen inches 
round, the rest fourteen inches and a half. I sawa larch of the 
old Duke's planting cut down, that in twenty-five years was above 
fifty feet high, and cut into planks above a foot in diameter, and 
above twenty feetlong; but there were some larches of the same 
date seventy feet high. They grow wonderfully in chalky soil. 
October 30th, 1762, the young Lord Petre came of age. 
The late Lord Petre, his father, died July 2d, 1742: he was my 
intimate friend, the ornament and delight of the age he lived in. 
He went from his house at Ingatestone in Essex, to his seat at 
Thorndon-Hall in the same county, to extend a large row of 
elms at the end of the park behind the house.. He removed, in 
the spring of the year 1734, being the 22d of his age, twenty- 
four full-grown elms about sixty feet high and two feet diame- 
ter: all grew finely, and now are not known from the old trees 
they were planted to match. In the year 1738 he planted the 
great avenue of elms up the park from. the house to the espla- 
i | : | nade: 
