MODERN BOTANIC GARDENS 43 



ing pleasure grounds. The house exists no longer, 

 but the grounds so laid out remain. Of him, there- 

 fore, this much can now be said, at any rate, that 

 to his inception we of the present generation, nearly 

 two hundred years later, owe in some not incon- 

 siderable measure, the pride and delight that all 

 Londoners, no less than many country folk, must 

 needs feel in the sylvan glades of Kew. 



The work which he left unfinished was carried 

 on and completed by his widow, the mother of 

 George III., and to this date may be referred the 

 various ornamental buildings, the familiar pagoda 

 and the temples of ^Eolus and of the Sun which 

 indicate the taste of that by-gone day. It is well to 

 remember, besides, that it was under the auspices 

 of this same Dowager Princess of Wales that the 

 collection of foreign plants was first begun. As 

 has been already said, the making of collections 

 of plants had been more or less in vogue in Eng- 

 land since the re-awakening of learning had given 

 an impetus to botanical science ; but about this 

 period, or a little earlier, the smouldering embers 

 of the cult would seem to have been fanned into 

 brisker flame. John Evelyn at Sayes Court, by 

 act and pen, had stirred up a mighty enthusiasm 

 for arboriculture. In the eighteenth century great 

 folk, like the Duke of Argyle at Hounston and the 

 Marquis of Bute, were still vying with each other 

 in planting all manner of foreign trees of new intro- 

 duction on their estates. The Dowager Duchess 

 of Portland chose her chaplain, Dr Lightfoot, 

 for his eminent botanical knowledge no less than 

 for his courtly manners! Collectors were abroad 



