328 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



indeed, remained in more or less active correspondence with 

 the Director up to the day of his death. His views were fur- 

 ther greatly facilitated by his friendly intercourse with the 

 foreign and colonial offices, the admiralty, and the East India 

 Company, to all of whom he had the means of rendering ser- 

 vices, by the recommendation of former pupils to posts in 

 their employment, and by publishing the botanical results of 

 the expeditions they sent out. . . . 



" At the time of Sir William's taking office, the gardens 

 consisted of eleven acres, with a most imperfect and generally 

 dilapidated series of ten hot-houses and conservatories. Most 

 of these have since been gradually pulled down, and, with the 

 exception of the great orangery (now used as a museum for 

 woods) and the large architectural house near the garden 

 gates, which has just previously been removed from Bucking- 

 ham Palace, not one now remains. They have been replaced 

 by twenty-five structures (in most cases of much larger di- 

 mensions) exclusive of the Palm-stove and the hitherto un- 

 finished great conservatory in the pleasure grounds. 



" To describe the various improvements which have re- 

 sulted in the present establishment, — including, as it does, 

 a botanic garden of seventy-five acres, a pleasure ground or 

 arboretum of two hundred and seventy acres, three museums, 

 stored with many thousand specimens of vegetable products, 

 and a magnificent library and herbarium, the finest in Europe, 

 placed in the late king of Hanover's house on one side of 

 Kew Green, near the gardens, — would rather be to give a 

 history of the gardens than the life of their director." . . . 



" It might be supposed that the twenty-four years of Sir 

 William's life spent at Kew in the above public improve- 

 ments, added to the daily correspondence and superinten- 

 dence of the gardens, would have left little time and energy 

 for scientific pursuits. Such, however, was far from being 

 the case. By keeping up the active habits of his early life, 

 he was enabled to get through a greater amount of scientific 

 work than any other botanist of his age." 



From this period his contributions to scientific botany, if 

 we except the journals and illustrated works (contained until 



