the Maiuiscripis of t/ie luit Pcler Col/iiison. 273 



cured b}' a large correspoiidcneo. lie lias 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 1 beheld with much delight this IQlh 

 of July, 176i. 



October 3d, 17^9, after nine years absence from Goodwood 

 after the death of my intimate friend the late Duke of Rich- 

 mond, 1 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 saw a 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 feet long ; 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- 

 nade: 



