198 KEW GARDENS 



Cumberland Gate that old story of "Eyes 

 and no Eyes ! " 



Within this enclosure, called the Herbaceous Ground, 

 heedlessly passed and perhaps never heard of by the 

 thousands who go to see the Palm Houses, lies to me the 

 real and truest interest of Kew. For here is a living 

 dictionary of English wild-flowers. The meadow and the 

 cornfield, the river, the mountain, and the woodland, the 

 seashore, the very waste place by the roadside, each has 

 sent its peculiar representatives, and glancing for the 

 moment, at large, over the beds, noting their number and 

 extent, remembering that the specimens are not in the 

 mass but individual, the first conclusion is that our own 

 country is the true Flowery Land. But the immediate 

 value of this wonderful garden is in the clue it gives to 

 the most ignorant, enabling any one, no matter how un- 

 learned, to identify the flower that delighted him or her, 

 it may be, years ago in far-away field or copse. Walking 

 up and down the green paths between the beds, you are 

 sure to come upon it presently, with its scientific name 

 duly attached and its natural order labelled at the end 

 of the patch. Had I only known of this place in former 

 days, how gladly I would have walked the hundred miles 

 hither. For the old folk, the aged men and country- 

 women, have for the most part forgotten, if they ever 

 knew, the plants and herbs in the hedges they had 

 frequented from their childhood. Some few, of course, 

 they can tell you ; but the majority are as unknown to 

 them, except by sight, as the ferns of New Zealand or the 

 heaths of the Cape. Since books came about, since the 

 railways and science destroyed superstition, the lore of 

 herbs has in great measure decayed and been lost. The 

 names of many of the commonest herbs are quite forgotten 



