162 KEW GARDENS 



be at little trouble or expense for watering this 

 exuberant greenery, through which runs an 

 avenue of foliage arched a hundred feet above 

 the ground, each tree wreathed with a different 

 creeper, "sending down sheets of greenery and 

 lovely flowers." Here, amid a court of "all the 

 gorgeous water-lilies of the world," the Victoria 

 Regia flourishes in the open air, as at Kew only in 

 its hothouse shelter. Here grows the Rafflesia, 

 named after Sir Stamford Raffles founder of 

 our Zoological Gardens, as of Singapore called 

 the largest flower in the world, at Kew re- 

 presented only by a wax model, which seems 

 just as well, since this vegetable monster, 

 measuring some yards across, soon becomes 

 foully infested by insects, so as to putrefy with 

 a disgusting smell. Here, too, a palm like a 

 gigantic primrose is said to have the largest fruit 

 and the largest leaves of any tree in the world, 

 the former two, and the latter ten feet in 

 diameter. For Javan curators, indeed, the 

 trouble is to provide in coo/-houses such shelter 

 as artificially heated conservatories are under our 

 scrimped sunshine ; and a separate Garden, some 

 thousands of feet higher up, makes an asylum 

 for our familiar plants carefully cultivated as a 



