Ill 



THE STORY OF THE GARDENS 



GARDENS appear to be an old story in this 

 neighbourhood. The Monastery of Sheen, that 

 stood on the flats somewhere about the present 

 Observatory, was equipped with its orchard, 

 vineyard, and other enclosures, through which 

 the holy fathers, like those of Melrose, would 

 be able to make "good kail, on Fridays when 

 they fasted"; and let us trust that suppressed 

 spite never drove them, as in a certain Spanish 

 cloister, to keep a brother's pet flowers " close- 

 nipped on the sly." 



Kew's connection with botany is as old as 

 the Tudor time, when Dr. William Turner had 

 a garden here. Of this physician, our first 

 scientific botanist, Chaucer could not have 

 said, "His study was but little on the Bible." 

 He was a disciple of Latimer, and a hot- 



