THE BOTANIC GARDENS AT KEW. m 



Among the many questions sent to Kew from all parts of the 

 world, there must "be some of trivial importance, or which could 

 be perfectly well answered at the local* botanic gardens. But all 

 genuine inquiries receive attention. Debate has been gravely 

 held, opinions even have been formed and reported upon such 

 matters as a South African cane which some gentleman in those 

 distant parts thought adapted for fishing-rods ; upon the value of 

 West African palm-kernels as material for coat-buttons ; upon a 

 pithy stem which the government of a West India island believed 

 suitable for razor-strops. 



One function of a national institution very seriously regarded 

 at Kew is the training of young men to fill botanic situations in 

 the colonies. Something is demanded of such young men beyond 

 the practical knowledge which suffices at home. Instruction is 

 given them in the principles of scientific botany, and those general 

 conditions which rule the practice of horticulture under differing 

 circumstances. The advantage of this system all around scarcely 

 needs illustration. While serving the interest of the colonies, it 

 increases the sources of information for Kew, since all these emi- 

 grants keep up more or less of a correspondence with the institu- 

 tion in which they were trained. 



The village of Kew lies on the south side of the Thames, about 

 six miles westward from Hyde Park Corner in London. " The 

 Gardens " are a favorite resort for holiday-makers and tourists, 

 being visited by six or seven hundred thousand persons yearly. 

 Painters also flock there in summer-time. When the crown sur- 

 rendered its rights to them in 1840, the Gardens had an area 

 of eleven acres, and contained ten greenhouses of one sort or 

 another. Sir William Hooker promptly begged permission to 

 annex the Orangery and the land adjacent ; then a part of the 

 Pleasure Grounds ; and after that the Royal Kitchen and For- 

 cing Grounds. All these petitions being granted, by 1847 the 

 Gardens had reached their present dimensions — about seventy 

 acres. Three years later the rest of the Pleasure Grounds was 

 granted for the establishment of an Arboretum, making the total 

 area little less than two hundred and fifty acres. " The Arbore- 

 tum is the richest in Europe, no doubt," says the writer in The 

 Saturday Review, "but probably inferior to that of Harvard 

 University, where special attention has been paid to this depart- 

 ment." This admission in a British journal, and The Saturday 

 Review above all others, should be very gratifying to Ameri- 

 cans. The failure of Kew's Arboretum to be the finest in the 

 world is explained on the ground that the soil — sandy and shal- 

 low, resting on a stratum of gravel — is unsuited to many kinds of 

 trees. In former times, also, when an imperial collection had to 

 be got together as quickly as possible, and as cheaply, specimens 



