CHAP. II. BRITISH ISLANDS. 127 
ornamental trees and shrubs are from North America. Our 
greatest hopes for future introductions are from the unpene- 
trated regions of North America, and the mountainous regions 
of Asia and New Zealand. 
We shall conclude this chapter by enumerating some of the 
principal planters of arboretums, and places where arboretums 
were planted, during the present century; premising that we do 
not include in this list any of those places which were com- 
menced during the last century. 
Among the planters of arboretums in Great Britain during 
the nineteenth century, the first place belongs to George, 
fourth duke of Marlborough. This nobleman, when Mar- 
quess of Blandford, resided on the estate of White Knights, 
near Reading, from the year 1800 till he succeeded his father 
in 1817. About 1801 he began to collect plants of every de- 
scription, built numerous hot-houses for the exotics, and occu- 
pied a large walled garden with the hardy herbaceous plants, 
and the more choice trees and shrubs. Soon after, finding this 
garden too limited, he employed, as an arboretum, a space of 
several acres, called the Wood; and throughout the park at 
White Knights he distributed many trees, and a collection, as 
extensive as could be then procured, of the genus Crategus. 
About this time magnolias, rhododendrons, azaleas, and other 
American trees and shrubs, being rare, or newly introduced, 
bore enormously high prices; but price was never taken into 
consideration by the Marquess of Blandford. He was never con- 
tent with only one plant of a rare species, if two or more could 
be got; and the late Mr. Lee of the Hammersmith Nursery in- 
formed us, that he had sold several plants of the same species to 
the marquess when they were at twenty guineas, and even thirty 
guineas each. In consequence of a similar mode of proceeding 
in his transactions generally, the Marquess of Blandford soon 
found himself involved in debt and lawsuits, which, since 1816, 
have greatly crippled his exertions. He has still, however, the 
same taste for plants, and indulges it, as far as his limited re- 
sources will permit, in the pleasure-grounds of the palace at 
Blenheim, where His Grace at present resides. White Knights 
is now chiefly remarkable for its magnolia wall, which is 145 ft. 
long and 24 ft. high, entirely covered with twenty-two plants of 
Magndlia grandiflora, which flower every year from June till 
November. ‘They were planted in the year 1800, when the 
price in the nurseries, for good plants, was five guineas each. In 
the Wood there are a great number of remarkably fine speci- 
mens of all the species of Magnolza, and especially of M. auri- 
culata and acuminata. ‘There are also very fine trees of Acer 
rubrum, sacchérinum, and striatum; of Z’sculus and Pavia, of 
Arbutus, of Kolreutéria, of Virgilia, of Cornus florida, of 
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