3i6 THE LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS 



with loose stones here and there. ... On the south, 

 within the area, are mounds of earth, like barrows/' * 

 Of course, the materials of the Abbey buildings had gone 

 in the usual manner : the stones were utilized by the 

 second Joseph Banks, when rebuilding the parish church. 

 Banks's methodical habits were in active operation 

 at Revesby. Domestic matters appear to have been 

 ruled in the same spirit as his official concerns ; accounts 

 were kept, and records made, in a way creditable to the 

 best man-of-business. There are some scanty evidences, 

 in his papers, that he could always give a remote date, 

 or a price, or the gist of a conversation, with perfect 

 accuracy. Both at Soho Square, and at his Lincolnshire 

 home, books, papers, knick-knacks, curiosities, botanical 

 preparations, were kept in the most absolute order. 2 



The house of Spring Grove, in Heston, was taken by 

 Banks in the year 1779. There was a good old garden 

 then in existence ; with a strawberry-bed of seventy-five 

 feet in length, and corresponding amplitude for vegetables 

 and fruits sufficient for a well-kept house. The new occu- 

 pant soon developed it, upon the lines appropriate to an 

 importer of exotic plants ; and the garden became cele- 



1 Gentleman's Magazine, 81, i. 19. In the year 1869 excavations were 

 made on this site by the Rev. Thomas Barker, incumbent of the parish. 

 v. Associated Arch&ological Societies' Journal, X, 22-25. 



8 Thanks to Arthur Young (General View of the Agriculture of 

 Lincoln), we get one faint, but intelligible, glimpse inside Banks's house 

 at Revesby : " His office of two rooms is contained in the space of thirty 

 feet by sixteen. There is a bricked partition between, with an iron- 

 plated door, so that the room in which a fire is always burning might be 

 burned out without affecting the inner one. . . . Here were one hundred 

 and fifty-six drawers, each with inside measurement of thirteen inches 

 by ten, all of them numbered. . . . There is a catalogue of names and 

 subjects, and a list of every paper in every drawer ; so that whether 

 the enquiry concerned a man, or a drainage, or an enclosure, or a farm, 

 or a wood, the request was scarcely named before a mass of information 

 was before me. Fixed tables are before the windows (to the south) on 

 which to spread maps, plans, etc., commodiously. . . . Such an apart- 

 ment, and such apparatus, must be of incomparable use in the manage- 

 ment of any great estate, or indeed of any considerable business." 



