SOME CORNISH GARDENS. 229 



gigantea, will ever attain the dimensions of that 

 specimen, of which some of us saw the outer bark 

 (eighteen inches thick) set up in the Crystal Palace, 

 Sydenham, and which was destroyed by the fire 

 in 1866. 



Fields of asparagus surprised me as I drew near 

 to Penzance, and a long train of trucks laden with 

 broccoli was just leaving the station for London. 

 Many thousand tons of this vegetable and of early 

 potatoes are annually sent from this terminus. The 

 asparagus is ready about a fortnight in advance of 

 our general crop, but the earlier and larger produce 

 from Versailles, Dijon, &c., materially reduces the 

 amount of profit. I may be misguided by prejudice 

 or palate, but I like our English asparagus, properly 

 grown, not too thickly, well manured and salted, and 

 boiled by some person with brains, much more than 

 the great white batons which are sent to us from 

 France. 



I went, of course, to the Land's End, well knowing 

 that if I failed to do so, I should be told in tones of 

 contemptuous pity, on my return home, that I had 

 thrown away an opportunity which might never recur 

 of witnessing one of the most magnificent, &c., &c., 

 and I saw " The Last Inn in England " announced 

 on the sign of the small hotel at Sennen as I went, 

 and " The First Inn in England " on the other side 

 as I returned, and I inspected the Logan Stone, of 

 which it was said that, though a child could move it, 

 no human power could dislodge, until one Goldsmith, 

 a relation of the poet and a lieutenant in the Eoyal 

 Navy, not believing in impossibilities, and remember- 



