98 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



skating days in each winter is instructive. Taking the 

 periods often years during the first decade, 1 830-40, there 

 was an average of 10.2 skating days per winter. In 

 1833-34 there were none, in 1837-38 thirty-seven days. 

 Between 1850-60 the average was only 8.5, while the last 

 ten years of the century it was 16.8. It is difficult to 

 see how any argument could be deduced from such 

 figures in favour of the excess of cold in the good old 

 days ! When the freezing of the Thames is quoted to 

 prove the case, people forget that the Thames has com- 

 pletely changed. The narrow piers of old London 

 Bridge no longer get stopped with ice-floes, and the 

 current is much more rapid now that the whole length is 

 properly embanked. In the days when coaches plied from 

 Westminster to the Temple Stairs as in 1684, or when 

 people dwelt on the Thames in tents for weeks in 1 740, 

 all the low land was flooded and the stream wider and 

 more sluggish. The believers in the hard winters gene- 

 rally maintain the springs were warmer than now, May 

 Day more like what poets pictured, even allowing the 

 eleven days later for our equivalent. But in 16 14 there 

 was snow a foot deep in April, and those who went in 

 search of flowers on May Day only got snowflakes. In 

 1698, on May 8th, there was a deep fall of snow all over 

 England, and many other instances might be quoted. So 

 it seems, though people may grumble now, their ancestors 

 were no better ofl: 



In the centre of the ground is the Royal Botanical 

 Society of London, founded in 1839. At one time the 

 Society was greatly in fashion, and the membership was 

 eagerly sought after. No doubt such will be the case 

 again, although for some reason the immense advance in 

 gardening during the last ten years has not met with the 



