the Manuscripts of the late Peter Collinson. 279 
Robert Mansell, at Margam ; late Lord Mansell's, now Mr. Tal- 
bot’s, called Kingsey-castle, in the road from Cowbridge to 
Swansey, in South Wales. My nephew counted eighty trees of 
citrons, limes, burgamots, Seville and China orange-trees, planted 
in great cases all ranged in a row before the green-house. This is 
the finest sight of its kind in England. He had the curiosity to 
measure some of them. A China orange measured in the extent 
of its branches fourteen feet. A Seville orange was fourteen feet 
high, the case included, and the stem twenty-one inches round. 
A China orange twenty-two inches and a half in girth. 
July 11th, 1777. F visited the orangery at Margam in the 
year 1766, in company with Mr. Lewis Thomas, of Eglews 
Nynngt in that neighbourhood, a very sensible and attentive 
man, who told me that the orange-trees, &c. in that garden were 
intended as a present from the King of Spain to the King of 
Denmark ; and that the vessel in which they were shipped being 
taken in the Channel, the trees were made a present of to Sir 
R. Mansell. 
— December 10th, 1765. A few days ago died my friend Mr. 
Bennet, who was very curious and industrious in procuring seeds 
and plants from abroad. He had a garden behind the Shad well 
water-works near the spot where he lived, and built several very 
handsome stoves at a great expense, filling them with fine exotics 
of all kinds; but the erecting a fire-engine to raise the water so 
hurt his plants by the smoke, that he removed to a large garden 
of two or three acres, in the fields at the back of Whitechapel 
laystalls. Here he built a large house for pines and other rare 
exotics, which he left well stocked. In this garden he raised 
water melons to a great size and perfection; I have told above 
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