54 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. “PART I. - 
Sussect. 4. Of the Foreign Trees and Shrubs introduced into Britain 
in the. 18th Century. 
A uost of amateurs, botanists, and commercial gardeners 
enriched the British arboretum during this century. In the 
preceding one, the taste fer foreign plants was confined to a few, 
and these not the richest persons in the community; but generally 
medical men, clergymen, persons holding small situations under 
government, or tradesmen. In the 18th century, the taste for 
planting foreign trees extended itself among the wealthy landed 
proprietors; partly from the influence of the Princess Dowager 
of Wales, who established the arboretum at Kew, and partly 
from the display previously made by Archibald Duke of Argyle 
at Whitton, the Duke of Richmond at Goodwood, and others. 
Towards the middle of the century, the change introduced in 
the taste for laying out grounds, by Pope, Addison, and Kent; 
and the circumstance that Brown, who had been a practical 
gardener, was extensively employed in remodelling country resi- 
dences according to this new taste, must have greatly contributed 
to increase the number of species employed in plantations; and 
hence we have the collections at Croome, at Syon, and at Clare- 
mont. The writings of Miller, Bradley, Switzer, and Linnzeus, 
and the consequent spread of botanical knowledge among the 
educated classes about the middle of the century or before, must 
have enlightened practical men to a degree far exceeding that 
which had ever previously existed. | 
In order to give a general view of the state of gardening in 
England in the first half of the 18th century, as far as it respects 
foreign trees, we shall begin by giving a summary notice, by 
Collinson, of the chief encouragers of gardening and planting of 
his time. Peter Collinson was born in London, in 1693: he was 
a quaker, and a linendraper. He had a country house and 
garden, first at Peckham in Surrey, and afterwards at Mill 
Hill, near Hendon in Middlesex. He appears to have taken 
possession of the latter place, Ridgeway House, sometime pre- 
vious to 1749. He was a great lover of animated nature in every 
form’; and in one of his letters, published by Sir James Edward 
Smith, in the Linnean Correspondence, he declares that every 
living thing called forth his affections. In a note written in 
1768, in one of his copies of Miller’s Dictionary, which was 
purchased from one of his lineal descendants in January 1835, 
by A. B. Lambert, Esq., and which, through the kindness of that 
gentleman, we have just seen, he declares, at the age of 68, that 
the plants in his garden at Mill Hill furnish his greatest source 
of happiness. He died in 1768. In the year 1764, he made 
notes on some blank leaves ina copy of Miller’s Dictionary, and 
