424 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. 



Great improvements have been going on (lie writes in 

 1892), and the next time you come you shall walk in 

 the " avenue " of four box-trees. Only five are to be had 

 for love or money at present, but there are hopes of a 

 sixth, and then the " avenue " will be full ten yards long ! 

 Figurez vous ga ! 



It was of this he wrote on October 1 : — 



Thank Heaven we are settled down again and I can 

 vibrate between my beloved books and even more 

 beloved saxifrages. 



The additions to the house are great improvements 

 every way, outside and in, and when the conservatory is 

 finished we shall be quite palatial ; but, alas, of all my 

 box-trees only one remains green, that is the " amari," or 

 more properly " fusci " aliquid. 



Sad things will happen, however. Although the 

 local florists vowed that the box -trees would not 

 stand the winds of Eastbourne, he was set on seeing if 

 he could not get them to grow despite the gardeners, 

 whom he had once or twice found false prophets. 

 But this time they were right. Vain were watering 

 and mulching and all the arts of the husbandman. 

 The trees turned browner and browner every day, 

 and the little avenue from terrace to terrace had to 

 be ignominiously uprooted and removed. 



A sad blow this, worse even than the following : — 



A lovely clematis in full flower, which I had spent 

 hours in nailing up, has just died suddenly. I am more 

 inconsolable than Jonah ! 



He answers some gardening chaff of Sir Michael 



Foster's : — 



! 



