GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



grew grey in its service. Mr. Thomas Wheeler filled the post of 

 Prefectus Horti and Botanical Demonstrator at Chelsea, for forty- 

 two years, and for the best part of half a century demonstrated in 

 the open air in the summer months, to the members of the Society 

 and to its students. But of him and his son I shall have more to say. 

 In 1753, just after the death of Sir Hans Sloan, the expenses 

 of the garden, which for some years had been 200 and 220 

 per annum, began again to be heavily felt ; and to the regular 

 upkeep had now to be added a considerable sum for repairs. An 

 appeal for help to the new President of the Royal Society was made 

 without result. It seems strange that Sir Hans Sloan, so liberal 

 to the garden in the past, should have made no provision whatever 

 for it in his will. The Society, however, bravely struggled on 

 independently, and in 1771, with the consent of the conservators 

 of the Thames for the City of London, in order to recover ground 

 that had once belonged to them, the apothecaries embanked the 

 garden towards the river, at the cost of 400. Their efforts indeed 

 throughout its history, both in their corporate capacity, and as. 

 individual members, are deserving of all praise. We read of one 

 " honorary " demonstrator presenting forty tons of old stones from 

 the Tower of London to raise a rockery for the cultivation of plants 

 requiring a particular soil ; and of the gift by Joseph, afterwards 

 Sir Joseph, Banks, of a large quantity of lava from Iceland ; this 

 was followed later by the presentation by him of three hundred 

 different kinds of seeds, collected in his voyage round the world 

 with Captain Cook in 1768. Besides all this, public-spirited 

 outsiders were willing to help an enterprise that, for the sake of 

 science, was making such a gallant fight for existence. In 1787 

 we find a handsome gift of loam arriving from Sion, the Duke of 

 Northumberland's estate at Isleworth ; and one wonders whether 

 the " seven loads of black mould " that came about the same time 

 from Wimbledon, " with the approval of Earl Spencer," may not 

 have been sent at the suggestion of Georgiana Spencer, the beautiful 

 Duchess of Devonshire, whom we shall meet with at Chiswick 

 House. I have dealt with the famous grounds of Sion and Chiswick 

 House in other chapters ; and independent of one another, for the 

 most part, as are the different gardens described in this boo , it 

 is rather interesting to find that there are connecting links between 

 most of them. 



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