328 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
indeed, remained in more or less active correspondence with 
the Director up to the day of his death. His views were fur- 
ther greatly facilitated by his friendly intercourse with the 
foreign and colonial offices, the admiralty, and the East India 
Company, to all of whom he had the means of rendering ser- 
vices, by the recommendation of former pupils to posts in 
their employment, and by publishing the botanical results of 
the expeditions they sent out. . . . 
“At the time of Sir William’s taking office, the gardens 
consisted of eleven acres, with a most imperfect and generally 
dilapidated series of ten hot-houses and conservatories. Most 
of these have since been gradually pulled down, and, with the 
exception of the great orangery (now used as a museum for 
woods) and the large architectural house near the garden 
gates, which has just previously been removed from Bucking- 
ham Palace, not one now remains. They have been replaced 
by twenty-five structures (in most cases of much larger di- 
mensions) exclusive of the Palm-stove and the hitherto un- 
finished great conservatory in the pleasure grounds. 
“To deseribe the various improvements which have re- 
sulted in the present establishment, — including, as it does, 
a botanic garden of seventy-five acres, a pleasure ground or 
arboretum of two hundred and seventy acres, three museums, 
stored with many thousand specimens of vegetable products, 
and a magnificent library and herbarium, the finest in Europe, 
placed in the late king of Hanover’s house on one side of 
Kew Green, near the gardens, — would rather be to give a 
history of the gardens than the life of their director.” .. . 
“It might be supposed that the twenty-four years of Sir 
William’s life spent at Kew in the above public improve- 
ments, added to the daily correspondence and superinten- 
dence of the gardens, would have left little time and energy 
for scientific pursuits. Such, however, was far from being 
the case. By keeping up the active habits of his early life, 
he was enabled to get through a greater amount of scientific 
work than any other botanist of his age.” 
From this period his contributions to scientific botany, if 
we except the journals and illustrated works (continued until 
