THE CHELSEA " PHYSICKE GARDEN ' 



Whether the guest would have escaped with a whole skin, had 

 the host understood Latin, we shall never know. The verses 

 remind one of some that were written by a visitor in the guest 

 book of a North Welsh inn : 



" With your head in a fog 

 And your feet in a bog, 

 That is the way to Festiniog." 



About 1835 Mr. J. L. Wheeler, who was for thirteen years Pro- 

 fessor of Botany at the Physic Garden, " having succeeded to a 

 fortune," retired. He became Master of the Society of Apothecaries, 

 and died in 1872, at a ripe old age. His post was then filled by a 

 very distinguished man, reputed to be one of the greatest botanists 

 in Europe. 



This was Dr. Lindley, who, born in 1799, at the age of twenty 

 became assistant-librarian to Sir Joseph Banks ; and in 1836, 

 was appointed Prefectus Horti, and Professor of Botany at Chelsea^ 

 He was one of those fortunate beings who could boast that until 

 past fifty, he never knew what it was to be tired in body or mind. 



Ten years after this a limb from one of the cedars was blown 

 off and converted into chairs for the use of the authorities. A 

 single chair had already been fashioned from branches blown down 

 in 1812. 



About this time William Anderson, the first head gardener to 

 the Apothecaries to be styled " Curator," died at the age of eighty, 

 and was buried between Philip Miller, also an octogenarian, and 

 Sir Hans Sloan, who had lived to nearly ninety-three. 



In 1862, owing to the combined effects of time, weather, and 

 neglect, the valuable herbaria in the sheds at Chelsea were discovered 

 to be decaying, and it was found necessary to remove them to the 

 British Museum. Perhaps this roused the Society to the necessity 

 for exertions, for the following year the Court of Assistants voted 

 500 to defray the expense of altering and improving the garden 

 in order to make it as complete a repertory of medical botany as 

 possible. New plants were introduced, and new hot-houses con- 

 structed for the protection of the more tender species, the culti- 

 vation of which had hitherto, from lack of means, been neglected. 



Seven years later the executive of the garden was served with 

 a notice from the Metropolitan Board of Works that must have 



131 9* 



