344 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



been in his family for some 150 years. It was well 

 known as Argyll Lodge, as the late Duke bought the 

 lease and made it his town residence from the time 

 he first took office in Lord Aberdeen's ministry in 1852. 

 Before that it was known as Bedford Lodge, as the. 

 Duchess of Bedford, step-mother of Lord John Russell, 

 the Prime Minister, had lived there and laid out and 

 planted most of the garden. The " two very old oaks, 

 which," wrote the Duke of Argyll, "would have done 

 no discredit to any ancient chase in England," are still 

 to be seen. The Duke was also delighted with the wild 

 birds which there made their homes in the garden ; in 

 fact, he says in his Memoirs, it was the sight of the 

 " fine lawn covered with starlings, hunting for grubs 

 and insects in their very peculiar fashion," the nut- 

 hatches " moving over the trees, as if they were in 

 some deep English woodland," the fly-catchers and the 

 warblers, that made him decide to take the house. 

 During the half-century he lived there many of the 

 birds, the fly catchers, reed-wren, black cap, and willow- 

 wren, and nut-hatches, deserted the garden, but even 

 now starlings and wood-pigeons abound, and, what is 

 even more rare in London, squirrels may be seen 

 swinging from branch to branch of the old trees. Be- 

 sides the two old pollard oaks there are good beech and 

 copper-beech, elder, chestnuts, snowy medlar, sycamore, 

 several varieties of thorn, and a large Scotch laburnum, 

 Laburnum alpinum^ which flowers later than the ordinary 

 laburnum, and is therefore valuable to prolong the 

 season of these golden showers. The leaves are broader 

 and darker, and growth more spreading. On the vine 

 trellis is a curious old vine with strongly scented flowers. 

 All the plants which thrive in London are well grown 



