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, burganiots, 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 stern twenty-one inches round. 

 A China orange twenty-two inches and a half in girth. 



July 11th, 1777- I 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 Kino- 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 Shadwell 

 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, tliat 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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