INNS OF COURT 287 



the trees of North America, he gives the same story, 

 and adds, "in August 1748" it produced, "at Mr. 

 Gray's, such numbers of blossoms, that the leaves were 

 almost hid thereby." This Mr. Gray owned the 

 nurseries in Brompton, famous under the management 

 of London and Wise. 



In Philip Miller's dictionary, Catesby's history of 

 the plant is referred to, and also in 1808, in the 

 Botanical Magazine^ when the plant was figured. 

 There it says the plant " has been long an inhabitant 

 of our gardens, being introduced by the same Botanist 

 [Catesby] about the year 1728." "It bears the smoke 

 of large towns better than most trees ; the largest 

 specimen we have ever seen grows in the garden 

 belonging to the Society of Gray's Inn." There is 

 no hint that the tree in question could have been 

 here before Catesby's discovery, and it is not till 

 Loudon's Encyclopaedia in 1822 that the planting is 

 attributed to Bacon. Such a remarkable tree could 

 hardly have escaped all gardeners for more than a 

 century, during a time when gardening was greatly 

 in fashion, and every new plant greedily sought after. 

 We know that nearly a hundred years ago this specimen 

 was the finest in England, and therefore it may have 

 been planted not more than a hundred years or so 

 after Bacon's death. Raleigh very likely walked with 

 Bacon on the spot where it now stands, but, alas ! the 

 possibility that he brought Bacon a tree from Virginia, 

 which was only discovered near the Mississippi a century 

 later, is hardly credible. 



The entrance to the Gardens on the Holborn side 

 is through massive wrought-iron gates, on which the 

 date 1723 is legible. The letters " w. i. g." are the 



