442 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
years, and I’am sure that the great interest he takes in London 
Rooks will induce him to pardon me for these my remarks. To 
come to details, it might be inferred from his statement that the 
Rookery in the gardens of the old Green-Park Lodge ceased to 
exist soon after the death of the Princess Amelia. This inference 
would be erroneous. “That lady died in 1810, but the house was 
for a long time after inhabited by Lady William Gordon, the widow 
of a Deputy-Ranger of the Park. I well remember it, and the high 
wall which, surrounding its garden, rendered the adjoining part of 
Piccadilly a most inconvenient strait. The house, I believe, had 
long been doomed, but in deference to its tenant its destruction 
was delayed. In 1841 Lady William died, and I think (though of 
this I am not quite sure) that it was immediately pulled down. 
Still the enclosed grounds and the nuisance of the high wall 
remained. There was the usual amount of “writing to ‘The 
Times,” and the usual number of questions in the House of 
Commons on the subject. At last public opinion was fully made 
up, and in the eventful session of 1844 a Bill, known as the 
‘Piccadilly Improvements Bill, was passed through Parliament 
by the Government, the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests 
being then (if I am not mistaken) Lord Lincoln, afterwards Duke 
of Newcastle. ‘This Bill, “to widen and improve Piccadilly,” 
received the Royal Assent on the 9th August in that year, and thus 
became ‘ Act 7 and 8 Vict. cap. 88.’ One of its principal objects 
was declared to be the making of “ the said street called Piccadilly 
from Bolton Street to Park Lane of an uniform width of Seventy 
Feet or thereabouts.” Its effect was the pulling down of the dead 
wall and the taking of a considerable slice off the garden of the 
former Ranger’s Lodge, while the rest of the garden was thrown 
into the Park. The line of plane-trees which still exists along the 
south side of the foot-pavement was preserved, at the instance, 
I remember then to have heard, of the late Sir Robert Peel;* but 
a large number of the trees in the heretofore private grounds were 
felled, and among them some or all of those which formed the 
Rookery. Whither the Rooks which had inhabited these trees 
went, or whether they immediately took their departure I know not; 
but Dr. Hamilton’s supposition that they then established the 
Rookery in Wharncliffe Gardens can hardly be correct. I do not 
* Mr. Wheatley, however, ascribes (‘ Round about Piccadilly,’ p. 257) the suggestion 
of keeping the trees to the late Sir Charles Barry. 
