EXPERIMENTAL GARDEN 169 



the former roofless, the latter pasturage run wild. All the 

 land above has been "developed," as it is called, i.e. covered 

 with rows of little speculative villas. Several of their small 

 garden-paths are edged with tiles taken from the walks of the 

 old Experimental Ground. A row of fine large fruit trees of 

 the Doctor's planting stretches across the ground : they once 

 shaded his walk from the cottage to the river, which runs a 

 field or two below. Along the upper side are a few old 

 Scotch Firs, but much cut about and broken: they are no 

 doubt the last vestiges of a belt of trees planted to screen 

 the ground from the easterly winds. For years, so the 

 neighbours told me, Dr. Daubeny's plants used to come up 

 and give pleasure to later generations. 



It was a picture of the lost opportunities of half a century. 

 In the eloquent words of Charles Kingsley, " our field may be a 

 small field, but it is a field ; tillage is possible, a crop is possible ; 

 who can tell whither the wind may waft its seeds when the 

 crop is ripe?" Had the opportunity been present, Oxford might 

 have had her share in the scientific "creation" of those new 

 wheats the wonderful qualities of which promise to raise the 

 position of English agriculture and reflect the greatest honour 

 on the directors of the Experimental Grounds at Cambridge. 



As an undergraduate I remember how carefully the tenant 

 had fenced himself in with barbed wire, notice boards, alarm- 

 bells on the gate, and perhaps, most effective of all, the sight of 

 a man-trap hung upon the wall of his cottage a curiosity which, 

 a few years later, I could not restrain myself from acquiring. 



But the spirit of scientific research is not easy to kill. 

 For years the plot yielded guinea-pigs for the Physiological 

 Laboratory, and with its aid George Romanes carried on 

 experiments of far-reaching consequence upon the crossing of 

 Himalayan with other varieties of rabbits, a research alluded 

 to in " Darwin and after Darwin," but one which had not been 

 concluded at the time of his early death. Romanes much 

 vyished to see established in Oxford what M. Giard has called 



