52 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1894. 



ly. Some of these tracts were formerly large preserves for game, 

 where only royalty and wealth were allowed to roam and hunt. Hyde 

 Park was once the property of a monastery and, if I remember right, 

 was confiscated, and after many changes became public property. 



St. James Park, once an uninviting tangle of wood and marsh, was 

 given up to a community of lepers, not being considered suitable for 

 anything else. Other parks, by the law of primogeniture, remained 

 intact in the hands of one family for many years until wanted for 

 park purposes. 



But even London now needs more parks. One writer says, "Still 

 as we well know, in the outskirts, those working men who love a 

 country walk, turning up some narrow way can find a few fields to 

 wander over ; there you may see them on Saturday or Sunday with 

 their sturdier children or perhaps with wife and baby too, taking a 

 happy stroll ; the little ones with pleasure gathering buttercups or 

 running merrily on the grass." ''Year by year these walks are turned 

 into 40-foot streets, houses come, and the walks are gone." Surely, 

 here is a lesson for each generation in Worcester. 



For many years the monks held undisturbed possession of Hyde 

 Park. After it became public, armies took possession of it during the 

 civil wars, once so destructive in England, were reviewed in it, and 

 marched through it on their way to the conflict. Later wealth and 

 its votaries monopolized it; but now, in the process of evolution 

 going on in society, it has become the grand resort of all classes, and 

 armies of the common people, men, women, and children, flock thither 

 daily in pleasant weather, especially on holiday occasions. One says 

 of it, "With fine expanse of grass, its bright flower-beds, and clumps 

 of shrubbery, its noble old trees, its beautiful ornamented lake, the 

 Serpentine, its broad avenues crowded with equipages, its Rotten Row 

 '[Route en Eoi, way of the king] alive with equestrians, its walks 

 lined with thousands of loungers of various nationalities, professions, 

 and grades of social position, Hyde Park, in the height of the season 

 presents a scene which, in the brilliancy of its tout ensemble, and its 

 peculiarly mingled contrasts can probably be paralleled nowhere else." 



Adjoining Hyde Park are the Kensington Gardens, comprising 

 some 600 acres, more thickly planted than Hyde Park, and contain- 

 ing avenues of rare plants and flowering shrubs. In these gardens 

 are found many aged and venerable trees, giving, in some portions, 

 the appearance of the last century. 



Kew with its gardens and glass houses, some six or seven miles 

 from Charing Cross, has many attractions. A French writer says, 



