112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



were not planted with the care which might have overcome the 

 disadvantage. It became necessary to reconstruct the Arboretum 

 twenty years ago on this account. A singular example of the in- 

 fluence of fashion in gardening then came to light. The British 

 public had been running after evergreens so hotly that nursery- 

 men had ceased to grow deciduous species. It seems incredible 

 that the authorities of Kew should have asked in vain for months 

 throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, for young aspens. 

 As for American oaks, maples, etc., they absolutely could not 

 be found in the kingdom. Unscientific lovers of the beautiful 

 may rejoice that it has not yet been found necessary to interfere 

 with the old forest trees, planted, perhaps, by Lord Capel. The 

 new-comers are arranged by genus — all the willows, for example, 

 with the alders, around the pretty lake, pines here, cedars there, 

 oaks, nuts, maples, tamarisks, camellias, ranunculus, etc., etc. 



In the Garden proper the smaller plants are found in bewilder- 

 ing array. No list of the species represented at Kew has been 

 taken since that of the younger Aiton in 1810, but one is now 

 being made. Some departments have been catalogued already. 

 Of orchids, there are about 1,400 species ; ferns, 1,100 ; stove plants, 

 2,500 ; succulents, 1,000 ; palms and cycads, 500 ; greenhouse plants, 

 3,000 ; herbaceous, 4,000 ; trees and shrubs, 3,000 ; in several cases, 

 however, the figure is but a guess as yet. The total, great as it 

 will prove to be, bears but a small proportion to the sum of Na- 

 ture's wealth. If we take the flowering plants alone, as enumer- 

 ated in Bentham and Hooker's Genera Plantarum, there are two 

 hundred natural orders, 10,000 genera, and 100,000 species; and 

 this leaves out of account the ferns and all the lower orders of 

 Cryptogamia. The Economic Section has few visitors, and they 

 are not tempted to carry exploration far. Not a few of the culi- 

 nary and medicinal herbs in use are found here. If by some 

 fatal chance the onion of commerce should be exterminated in the 

 back-gardens of England, Kew is prepared to replace it. Side by 

 side therewith grow the patience-dock and the skunk-cabbage, 

 the briony, the cuckoo-pint, the Japanese yam, and the all-good. 

 In ferns the Kew collection is exceedingly rich. It has had three 

 special benefactors in this department, to the first of whom, Mr. 

 George C. Joad, the public is indebted for the charming rock-gar- 

 den opened in 1881. Sir Joseph Hooker had long been working 

 for one, and the bequest of Mr. Joad's collection of ferns brought 

 the matter to a crisis. Dr. Cooper Forster was an enthusiast upon 

 the culture of filmy ferns, and Mr. W. C. Carbonell was specially 

 interested in the cultivation of hardy ferns, particularly in the 

 crossing of them, and the development of sports. Both these gen- 

 tlemen bequeathed their treasures for the nation's enjoyment when 

 their own power of enjoying them ended. 



